Aug 15, 2017
How to Read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Americanah’
“I am three days aged in Lagos and cry as my fingers turn the first page.”
“I am three days aged in Lagos and cry as my fingers turn the first page.”
“Unlike most popular orphan characters, I wasn’t too young to remember my parents.”
Briggs didn’t create the monster lurking under the bed, he just told us it was there.
“My reading trajectory hadn’t equipped me with how I saw myself.”
“Through books, the best parts of me could breathe and be seen. No boy was going to fuck that up for me.”
A fan-pilgrim expects to find a special world, a sense of belonging. I just wasn’t sure what I’d find on Anne’s island.
We know the damage of othering. What about the ravages of Same-ing?
“Their Eyes Were Watching God is a timeless novel that shows us the resilience of the human spirit.”
“As a child, I swallowed the Nation’s ideology as easily as the Harlem residents Baldwin observed.”
“If I were writing a book about a movie, it would be Stand By Me.”
“I was left dazed and sad and missing my cat while tending to a newborn.”
“Insomnia is the bitter digestif to a long day of living.”
“I felt betrayed. Not because she was no longer anonymous; I had never cared about that. But because she is not Elena.”
Author Frank M. Robinson shamelessly proselytized great literature he loved.
“You pick your tragedy and aim for that. I chose earthquake.”
Why are ambitious wives in novels figured as dumb or evil or both?
Like her, I was a Canadian who left Canada. Like her, I wanted to be an unsentimental writer. But I was not Mavis Gallant.
“Books are the cause of so many bad ideas.”
