She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.
People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it brought—to be rude...
Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn’t have a husband to speak...
Oh, it’s normal, he said, and she remembered how he had always been quick to reassure her, to make her feel better. I was away for a much shorter time, obviously, but I was very surprised when I came...
Of course it was angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry.
Nigerians don’t buy houses because they’re old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn’t work here at all. But of course it makes sense bec...
Nigeria became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil.
Nature’s first green is gold.
Love was a kind of grief.
Just give her one, Ifemelu thought. To overwhelm a child of four with choices, to lay on her the burden of making a decision, was to deprive her of the bliss of childhood. Adulthood, after all, alread...
It’s strange how I have felt, with every major event that has occurred in my life, that you were the only person who would understand.
It seemed to me that in America blacks and whites work together but don’t play together, and here blacks and whites play together but don’t work together, Emenike said.
It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion
Into my heart on air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost contentI see it shining plain,The happy highw...
In secondary school, a boy and a girl go out, both of them teenagers with meager pocket money. Yet the boy is expected to pay the bills, always, to prove his masculinity. (And we wonder why boys are m...
Ifemelu margined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.
Ifemelu imaginaba a los autores, nigerianos en casas lúgubres de Estados Unidos, sus vidas amortecidas por el trabajo, guardando el dinero ahorrado con cuidado a lo largo del año para poder visitar su...
Ifemelu decided to stop faking an American accent on a sunlit day in July, the same day she met Blaine. It was convincing, the accent. She had perfected, from careful watching of friends and newscaste...
If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is comin...
I'm chasing you. I'm going to chase you until you give this a chance.