Американха

Не говори: «Ой, с расизмом покончено, рабство отменено давным-давно». Мы говорим о бедах с 1960-х и далее, а не с 1860-х.

Мне показалось, что в Америке чёрные и белые работают вместе, но вместе не развлекаются, а у нас тут чёрные с белыми развлекаются вместе, а вот работают врозь.

Он вечно придумывал, что бы ещё такого сделать, а она говорила ему, что для неё это редкость, она выросла не в делании, а в бытии.

He looked up. “But, Ifem, we’re going to get married anyway.”
“Look at you. I might meet a rich handsome man and leave you.”
“Impossible. We’ll go to America when we graduate and raise our fine children.”
“You’ll say anything now because your brain is between your legs.”
“But my brain is always there!”

В Америке рассизм существует, а рассистов больше нет

He told her that it was not technique, but emotion. He had done what her ex-boyfriend had done but the difference, in this case, was love.
“You know it was love at first sight for both of us,” he said.

His kiss was enjoyable, almost heady; it was nothing like her ex-boyfriend Mofe, whose kisses she had thought too salivary.

“You make me shy,” he said.
“Are you serious? Because you make me shy.”
“I don’t believe anything makes you shy,” he said.

I saw you wearing tight trousers last Saturday,” Sister Ibinabo said to a girl, Christie, in an exaggerated whisper, low enough to pretend it was a whisper but high enough for everyone to hear.

Kosi expected him to cheat, and her concern was to minimize the possibilities he might have

In the pride in her eyes, he saw a shinier, better version of himself.

She was taking two sides at once, to please everyone; she always chose peace over truth, was always eager to conform.

I’m also going back to Nigeria to see my man,” Ifemelu said, surprising herself. My man. How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives that we have imagined.
“Oh! Okay!” Aisha said, excited; Ifemelu had finally given her a comprehensible reason for wanting to move back. “You will marry?”

Откровенность должна зависеть от контекста

and when she took it, a sudden crushing loneliness lanced through her and stayed with her for weeks. Sometimes, she still felt it. How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted?

So she told him that she was moving back home, and she added, “I have to,” knowing he would hear in her words the sound of an ending.

She did not tell Blaine at first, because she wanted to finish her fellowship at Princeton, and then after her fellowship ended, she did not tell him because she wanted to give herself time to be sure.

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

It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness