Catholics From Nigeria

"It does not matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed."

"Age is irrelevant in grief; at issue is not how old he was but how loved."

"“I have always longed to be known, truly known by another human being.”"

"“Women in general are more likely to have richer interior lives and are also socialized to just sort of embrace more complexity emotionally.”"

"“Writing fiction is the love of my life. It's the thing that I think gives me meaning.”"

"“I’ve always been willing to take the consequences of speaking my mind. ... No, no, no. I said what I believe.”"

"“Social media has reshaped the traditional power dynamic by giving some access to the powerless, it has also made it easy to mistake the loudest voices for the truest.”"

"“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more.”"

"“There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers.”"

"“We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.”"

"“I feel that I have been fortunate to have found success, and I also want the young writers to have what I did not have when I was starting out my writing career … Writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum; we talk about politics, everything.”"

"“Feminism for me is about justice; it’s about the idea that all human beings are equal… Feminism just means equality of opportunity.”"

"“I am not apologetic for being a Nigerian. I won’t apologise for it; it’s who and what I am.”"

"(Whose writing today most inspires you?) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work — both fiction and nonfiction..."

"I knew how I was supposed to feel, but I did not know how I felt. It was not transcendental. There was a festering red pain between my legs. Somewhere in my consciousness, a mild triumph hovered, because it was over, finally it was over, and I had pushed out the baby. So animalistic, so violent—the push and pressure, the blood, the doctor urging me, the cranking and stretching of flesh and organ and bone."

"My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard.""

"No matter who we are, we dream."

"In Nigeria I'm not black ... We don't do race in Nigeria. We do ethnicity a lot, but not race. My friends here don't really get it. Some of them sound like white Southerners from 1940. They say, "Why are black people complaining about race? Racism doesn't exist!' It's just not a part of their existence.""

"I don’t think sexism is worse than racism, it’s impossible even to compare ... It’s that I feel lonely in my fight against sexism, in a way that I don’t feel in my fight against racism. My friends, my family, they get racism, they get it. The people I’m close to who are not black get it. But I find that with sexism you are constantly having to explain, justify, convince, make a case for."

"I don’t think I’m more inherently likely to do domestic work, or childcare ... It doesn’t come pre-programmed in your vagina, right?"

"Because we write fiction we mine our souls. Of course you put yourself into your fiction, your fiction is you."

"This is the kind of capitalism I hate. This is bullying capitalism. Look, I am Igbo, I come from a trading culture. My people are merchant and I'm all for buying and selling. But capitalism has to be a fair exchange."

"Feminism is not that men and women are the same. If men and women are the same, we won't have sexism. We are just stating the differences and people should stop giving negative value to all the attributes that women have. It's not that men and women are the same but they've equally human."

"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men."

"I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there."

"The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable."

"Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture."

"There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class."

"(Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?) Tash Aw, Niq Mhlongo, Rachel Seiffert, Mary Gaitskill, David Szalay, Leila Aboulela, Dave Eggers, Tracy K. Smith, Tessa Hadley, Richard Flanagan, Claire Messud, James Lasdun, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vivian Gornick, the late Bharati Mukherjee, Deborah Levy, John Gregory Brown, Amit Chaudhuri, Nawal El Saadawi, Margo Jefferson, Jesmyn Ward, Lynn Nottage, Janet Malcolm, Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Walker, Peter Orner, Susan Orlean."

"Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing."

"Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice."

"When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. "We are too superior/busy/cool/not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people, and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall.""

"If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion."

"I'm chasing you. I'm going to chase you until you give this a chance."

"They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure,” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge."

"She liked that [Obinze] wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt. Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. She would sink into moodiness, and snap at Obinze, or be distant. And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away."

"She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself."

"With him, she was at ease: her skin felt as though it was her right size. She told him how she very much wanted God to exist but feared He did not, how she worried that she should know what she wanted to do with her life but did not even know what she wanted to study at university. It seemed so natural, to talk to him about odd things. She had never done that before. The trust, so sudden and yet so complete, and the intimacy, frightened her."

"Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right."

"I cannot control even the dreams that I have made."

"People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival."

"The white missionaries brought us their god,” Amaka was saying. “Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it?"

"Eugene has to stop doing God's job. God is big enough to do his own job. If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging, not Eugene."

"There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair."

"Things started to fall apart when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the étagère."

"I meant to say I am sorry that Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, ‘I’m sorry your figurines broke, Mama.’"

"( Page 10)"

"Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet.’"

"It was a joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewande. But Papa did not laugh. Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently."

"( Page 58)"