Velma’s Reviews > Americanah > Status Update

Obi ocha = clean heart

“Racial Disorder Syndrome...mild, medium, and acute.”

“The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves.” p307

I think I would be afraid to have CNA sketch me in prose, because then I might have to know things about myself that would scare me.

“...both [were] unhappy people. But Kimberly’s unhappiness was inward, in acknowledged, shielded by her desire for things to be as they should, and also by hope: she believed in other people’s happiness because it meant that she, too, might one day have it. Laura’s unhappiness was different, spiky, she wished that everyone around her were unhappy because she had convinced herself that she would always be.”

Struck by the conversation (p138-39) about the “bleeping out” of the N-word in *Roots*, because I’ve always had the same reaction as Wambui, but as a vvhite woman I’ve questioned the value of my perspective.