Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, beca...
My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Gha...
Military men would always overthrow one another, because they could, because they were all power drunk.
Isn't it odd that in most societies in the world today, women generally cannot propose marriage? Marriage is such a major step in your life, and yet you cannot take charge of it; it depends on a man a...
I cannot control even the dreams that I have made.
Ella no entendía el grunge , la idea de ofrecer un aspecto sucio porque podias permitirte no ir sucio, era una burla para los verdaderamente sucios.
Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.
And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.
A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.
What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have—I’ve neverthought it made much sense to leave...
They never said I don’t know. They said, instead, I’m not sure, which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.
The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership. We
She cries quietly, her shoulders heaving up and down, not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do, the kind that screams Hold me and comfort me because I cannot deal with this alone. Th...
Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it. Still
If we do something over and over, it becomes normal.
If the sun refuses to rise we will make it rise
I now know that nothing he does will make my life change. My life will change only if I want it to change.
Her feet had turned into snails.
Como soy mujer, se espera de mí que aspire al matrimonio. Se espera de mí que tome decisiones en la vida sin olvidar nunca que el matrimonio es lo más importante. El matrimonio puede ser bueno, una fu...
Charming, was what one of the girls said later: Your boyfriend is so charming. And the thought occurred to Ifemelu that she did not like charm. Not Curt’s kind, with its need to dazzle, to perform. Sh...