Emily M’s Reviews > The Opposite House > Status Update

"'Anyway, these boys are Ghanaian, so she thought I'd be perfect.' I scrutinize him, but I can't tell what percentage of what he just said is a joke. He must know that if he mentors these boys, he is not showing them what a Ghanaian can do with his life, but what a white guy can do who chooses or refuses Ghana at any given moment. I change the subject."

"He didn't think of money as money, he thought of it as a way to get books, going through reading lists in his head over and over again, returning to the places where he felt strongest."

“Cubans are cheerful, Cubans are resilient, Cubans are collectivist. In my mother’s country, I thought, la lucha is such that people are not equipped to understand when they are unhappy. It’s a situation-specific kindness from God…they have no internal off switch and so it is that they go on and on and on.”
I don’t agree broadly… but this doesn’t NOT describe my family!

OK, so these "people" in the second storyline ARE orishas! That makes more sense.

“You are lucky that you have been educated in a country where you’re supposed to act uninterested. You’re very lucky that you’ve been educated in a country where it is not necessary to get out. Imagine if the only way you could have a good life was to learn your books! Would you yawn then? No, indeed, you would grin and say, Thank you Mr Englishman, please tell me how I may continue to improve.”

“I soon outgrew Mami’s evening flower ceremonies…What is it that’s holy about those flowers? Is it that they burn? Or that they burn so readily? But you can burn a cross, a witch, a piece of toast…”