It had become a routine of Ifemelu’s visits: Aunty Uju collected all her dissatisfactions in a silk purse, nursing them, polishing them, and then on the Saturday of Ifemelu’s visit, while Bartholomew...
It does not have to mean a literal fifty-fifty or a day-by-day score-keeping, but you’ll know when the child-care work is equally shared. You’ll know by your lack of resentment. Because when there is...
In the recent US elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job...
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...
Ifemelu was looking forward to being away from home, to the independence of owning her own time.
Ifemelu wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given, to be...
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 stood by the window while Aunty Uju sat at the table drinking orange juice and airing her grievances like jewels. It had become a routine of Ifemelu’s visits: Aunty Uju collected all her dissa...
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 opened her novel, Jean Toomer's Cane, and skimmed a few pages. She had been meaning to read it for a while now, and imagined she would like it since Blaine did not. A precious performance, Bla...
Ifemelu bristled at Chetachi’s goading. Still, it was her mother’s fault, to so eagerly tell the neighbors her mentor story. She should not have; it was nobody’s business what Aunty Uju did. Ifemelu h...
If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry....
If you are a woman, you are not supposed to express anger, because it is threatening.
If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if uncon...
IFEMELU HAD GROWN UP in the shadow of her mother’s hair. It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally r...
I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, 'Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?' This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences...
I thought then of catechism classes, about chanting the answer to a question, an answer that was because he has said it and his word is true. I could not remember the question.
I often wear clothes that men don’t like or don’t understand. I wear thembecause I like them and because I feel good in them. The male gaze, as a shaper of mylife’s choices, is largely incidental.
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. Because I deserve to be. I