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c964349
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was shaking his head sadly as he spoke--was that I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e808d32
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Nigerians don't buy houses because they're old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn't work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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672520e
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He was now a husband and father, and they had not been in touch in years, yet she could not pretend that he was not a part of her homesickness, or that she did not often think of him, sifting through their past, looking for portents of what she could not name.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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1274f73
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I go to Mexico and they're staring at me. It's not hostile at all, but it just makes you know you stick out, kind of like they like you but you're still King Kong.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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092365e
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Was it the one with long hair?" the cashier asked. "Well, both of them had long hair." "The one with dark hair?" Both of them had dark hair. Ginika smiled and looked at the cashier and the cashier smiled and looked at her computer screen, and two damp seconds crawled past before she cheerfully said, "It's okay, I'll figure it out later and make sure she gets her commission." As they walked out of the store, Ifemelu said, "I was waiting for ..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c2518d1
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They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say "Ask somebody upstairs"; they said "You might want to ask somebody upstairs." When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell you, they did not say "Sorry." They said "Are you okay?" when it was obvious that you were not. And when you said "Sorry" to them when they choked or tripped or encountered misfortune, they replied, eyes wide with surprise, "Oh, it's not you..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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dcb9bf4
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Don't you just hate it how people say 'I'm pressed' or 'I want to ease myself' when they want to go to the bathroom?" Doris asked. Ifemelu laughed. "I know!" "I guess 'bathroom' is very American. But there's 'toilet,' 'restroom,' 'the ladies.' " "I never liked 'the ladies.' I like 'toilet.' " "Me too!" Doris said. "And don't you just hate it when people here use 'on' as a verb? On the light!" "You know what I can't stand? When people say 't..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c83e4ea
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Okay, babe, okay, I didn't mean for it to be such a big deal," he said."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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938be46
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When Sister Ibinabo was talking to Christie, with that poisonous spite she claimed was religious guidance, Ifemelu had looked at her and suddenly seen something of her own mother. Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that s..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2fee87d
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jdy lmy wjdy l'by klhm kn rjl ry'`.klhm wuld fy bdyt lqrn l20 fy rD qbyl@ lbyw ltb`h llHkm lbryTny,klhm qrr n y`lm bnh,klhm kn khfyf lZl.wklhm kn dh kbry.`lmt kl hdh `br lqSS lty Hukyt ly.qbl mwldy bthmy snwt qutl jdy fy byfr kljy'yn b`dm fr mn msqT r'syhm lty sqTt tHt slT@ lHshwd lfydrlyh...ktb@ nSf shms Sfr knt bmthb@ `d rsm shy' lm rh `ly nny Hmlt myrthh km nh km aml Drybty llHb:dhlk lshy' lsHr llmnTqy ldhy yrbT byn lns wldhy yj`ln admyy..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ce5fd2c
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surrounded by students who were all folded easily on their seats, all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of the classes, but of how to be in the classes
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5451b17
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A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a6ffb55
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We need to get over that myth. There was nothing Judeo-Christian about American history. Nobody liked Catholics and Jews. It's Anglo-Protestant values, not Judeo-Christian values. Even Maryland very quickly stopped being so Catholic-friendly.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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9048cba
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You know who really killed Lumumba?" Master said, looking up from a magazine. "It was the Americans and the Belgians. It had nothing to do with Katanga."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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9665bd5
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Ifemelu sensed that the magazine was a hobby for Aunty Onenu, a hobby that meant something, but still a hobby. Not a passion. Not something that consumed her.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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f1869ba
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It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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72c4ea0
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What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity and money? What if their attitude was not "the boy has to pay," but rather, "whoever has more should pay."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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de84d55
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We all have our moments of initiation into the Society of Former Negroes. Mine was in a class in undergrad when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was. So I just made something up.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c0b261e
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Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8f303bf
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had pretended
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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fa792b1
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Men ras ar inte biologi; ras ar sociologi. Ras ar inte genotyp; ras ar fenotyp. Ras ar betydelsefullt pa grund av rasismen.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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58991c5
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smiling a smile full of things restrained
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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dca2f2e
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Han upptackte att sorg inte mattas med tiden utan istallet var ett labilt sinnestillstand.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e3768ac
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Big Men and Big Women, Obinze would later learn, did not talk to people, they instead talked at people...
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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af99084
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On the Subject of Non-American Blacks Suffering from Illnesses Whose Names They Refuse to Know.
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non-americans
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6e77d73
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was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved--but the fat woman's act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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37d4dea
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The other day Marcia was talking about how black women are fat because their bodies are sites of anti-slavery resistance. Yes, that's true, if burgers and sodas are anti-slavery resistance.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7c16e89
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He wanted to know about day-to-day life in America, what people ate and what consumed them, what shamed them and what attracted them, but he read novel after novel and was disappointed:
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b2b846c
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He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6ea831e
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now." After Ifemelu hung up, still amused, she decided to change the title of her blog to Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Job Vacancy in America--National Arbiter in Chief of "Who Is Racist" In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. H..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a027a5f
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The little boy had a delightful curious face. "Do you live in London?" he asked Obinze. "Yes," Obinze said, but that yes did not tell his story, that he lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch; each time he saw a policeman, or anyone in a uniform, anyone with the faintest scent of authority, he would fight the urge"
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7196178
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happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8c80043
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Besides, humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty that he valued;
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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f60960c
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Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. In addition to anger, I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better. But
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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84453b5
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Ate que enfim" quando o trem finalmente chegou rangendo, com aquela familiaridade que os estranhos adotam uns com os outros depois de compartilhar a decepcao com um servico publico."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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edbbb43
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She looked away, worried that the crush of emotions she had felt while he was speaking would now converge on her face. "Of course you don't. You like your life," she said. "I live my life." "Oh, how mysterious we are."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6d978e4
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There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e3a2a11
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After work, she wandered around the center of Baltimore, aimlessly, interested in nothing. Was this what the novelists meant by ennui?
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e95f5dd
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pillow on
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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340e194
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I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialectics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking academese instead of English and they don't really know what's happening in the real world.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b35cd6b
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her skin felt as though it was her right size.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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586d434
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But Emenike resumed talking, gesturing, his movements fluid and sure, his manner still that of a person convinced they knew things that other people would never know.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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55acb12
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America to fight on the Internet over their mythologies of home, because home was now a blurred place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of how inconsequential they had become.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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312968b
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it would hurt him to know that 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.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |