They fascinated him, the unsubtle cowering of the almost rich in the presence of the rich, and the rich in the presence of the very rich; to have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money. Obinze...
They expected certain things of her, and forgave certain things from her, because she was foreign. Once, sitting with them in a bar, she heard Curt talking to Brad, and Curt said blowhard. She was str...
They do not doubt their presence here, these students. They believe they should be here, they have earned it and thay are paying for it. Au fond, they have bought us all. It is the key to America’s gr...
They believed. They truly believed. It often came to her as a sweet shock, the knowledge that there were so many people in the world who felt exactly as she and Blaine did about Barack Obama. On
They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say Ask somebody upstairs; they said You might want to ask somebody upstairs. When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell y...
They agreed, without any prodding, without the shadows of obligation or compromise, on Barack Obama. At first, even though she wished America would elect a black man as president, she thought it impos...
These Americans cannot speak English
There were, on a window ledge, photos of Emenike squinting in front of the Sistine Chapel, making a peace sign at the Acropolis, standing at the Colosseum, his shirt the same nutmeg color as the wall...
There was something unquestioning about her roommates’ lives, an assumption of certainty that fascinated her, so that they often said, Let’s go get some, about whatever it was they needed—more beer, p...
There was a feeling I wanted to feel that I did not feel.
There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take charity for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know -- perhaps it came f...
There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers.
There are slightly more women than men in the world—52 percent of the world’s population is female—but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men.
There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It
The white missionaries brought us their god, Amaka was saying. Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to the...
The second tool is a question: Can you reverse X and get the same results? ... If the answer is yes, then your choosing to forgive him can be a feminist choice because it is not shaped by a gender ine...
The rude stranger in the supermarket--who knew what problems he was wrestling with, haggard and thin-lipped as he was--had intended to offend her but had instead prodded her awake.
The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to...
The pioneering American journalist Marlene Sanders, who was the first woman to report from Vietnam during the war (and who was the mother of a son), once gave this piece of advice to a younger journal...
The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative.