Impossible, he said, and switched to Igbo. Ama m atu inu. I even know proverbs. Yes. The basic one everybody knows. A frog does not run in the afternoon for nothing. No. I know serious proverbs. Akota...
Iloba would often...appear at Obinze's door on Sunday afternoons when Obinze was tired from the langour of Sunday afternoons.
Ifemelu would come to realize later that Kimberly used beautiful in a peculiar way. I’m meeting my beautiful friend from graduate school, Kimberly would say, or We’re working with this beautiful woman...
Ifemelu told her about the vertigo she had felt the first time she went to the supermarket; in the cereal aisle, she had wanted to get corn flakes, which she was used to eating back home, but suddenly...
Ifemelu sensed that the magazine was a hobby for Aunty Onenu, a hobby that meant something, but still a hobby. Not a passion. Not something that consumed her.
Ifemelu margined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.
Ifemelu liked the name of the town, Willow; it sounded to her like freshly squeezed beginnings.
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...
If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, e...
I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-colour crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow...
I know that they don't intend harm, but it is one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to feel it.
I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness.
I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be. I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good arg...
I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.
How was it possible to miss something you longer wanted? Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been.
How can a person claim to love you and yet want you to do things that suit only them? Udenna was like that.
Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people.
He was no longer sure, he had in fact never been sure, whether he liked his life because he really did or whether he liked it because he was supposed to.
He was left-leaning and well-meaning, crippled by his acknowledgment of his own many privileges. He never allowed himself to have an opinion. Yes, I see what you mean, he said often.
He was fired for refusing to call his new boss Mummy.