maryam’s Reviews > Americanah > Status Update

“she laughed too although she didn’t fully understand the joke. & she had the sudden sensation of fogginess, of a Milky Web thru which she tried to claw. Her autumn of half blindness had begun, the autumn of puzzlement, of experiences she had knowing there were slippery layers of meaning that alluded her.”

“Ifemelu imagine the writers, Nigerians in bleak houses in America, their lives, dead, and by work, nursing their careful savings throughout the year so that they could visit home in December for a week, when they would arrive bearing suitcases of shoes and clothes and cheap watches, and see, in the eyes of their relatives, brightly burnished images of themselves.

“ and so she began to teach him mathematics – she called it ‘maths’ and he called it ‘math’ and so they agreed not to shorten the word.”

“ at the grocery store, Aunty Uju never bought what she needed; instead she bought what was on sale and made herself need it.“
“‘ put it back,“ aunty Uju said, with the nasal, sliding accent, she put on when she spoke to white Americans, in the presence of white Americans, in the hearing of white Americans. Pooh-reet-back. And with the accent emerged, a new persona, apologetic, and self basing.”

“ she rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, which she would often feel with him: a self affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.” real recognize real. They’re soul mates

“ But his honored English bothered her as she got older, because it was a costume, his shield against insecurity. He was haunted by what he did not have – a postgraduate degree, and upper middle class life – and so his affected words became his armor. She preferred it when he spoke Igbo; it was the only time he seemed unconscious of his own anxieties.”

“Sometimes, like now, he felt like an intruder in his new circle, of people who believed that the latest schools, the latest curriculums, would ensure the wholeness of their children. He did not share their certainties. He spent spent too much time mourning what could have been and questioning what should be.”