Amory Blaine’s Reviews > Americanah > Status Update
Amory Blaine
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She said the word “fat” slowly, funneling it back and forward, and thought about all the other things she had learned not to say aloud in America. . And she had ignored, too, the cement in her soul. . 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...
— Jul 09, 2020 10:39AM
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Amory Blaine
is 2% done
How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted?
— Jul 09, 2020 10:42AM
Amory Blaine
is 2% done
“Why?” he asked. But she had not had a bold epiphany &there was no cause; it was simply that layer after layer of discontent had settled in her, &formed a mass that now propelled her. She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out.
— Jul 09, 2020 10:42AM
Amory Blaine
is 2% done
She began to plan and to dream, to apply for jobs in Lagos. 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. But as the weeks passed, she knew she would never be sure. So she told him that she was moving back home, and she added, “I have to,"
— Jul 09, 2020 10:41AM
Amory Blaine
is 2% done
[2] The more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet one more scale of self until she felt naked and false.
— Jul 09, 2020 10:33AM
Amory Blaine
is 2% done
[1] Readers like SapphicDerrida, who reeled off statistics and used words like “reify” in their comments, made Ifemelu nervous, eager to be fresh and to impress, so that she began, over time, to feel like a vulture hacking into the carcasses of people’s stories for something she could use. Sometimes making fragile links to race. Sometimes not believing herself.
— Jul 09, 2020 10:32AM
Amory Blaine
is starting
it was this, the lack of a smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly. Philadelphia had the musty scent of history. New Haven smelled of neglect. Baltimore smelled of brine, and Brooklyn of sun-warmed garbage. But Princeton had no smell. She liked taking deep breaths here.
— Jul 09, 2020 10:30AM
