Americanah

slowed by sadness, frightened by the endless stretch of day that lay ahead.

Good customer service, good customer service, good customer service,” Bisola said. “Folks here behave as if they are doing you a favour by serving you. The high-end places are okay, not great, but the regular restaurants? Forget it. The other day I asked a waiter if I could get boiled yam with a different sauce than was on the menu and he just looked at me and said no. Hilarious.”

Ifemelu thought the home visit unprofessional and odd, but this was a small magazine, and this was Nigeria, where boundaries were blurred, where work blended into life, and bosses were called Mummy.

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

If both are caught for drug possession, say, the white guy is more likely to be sent to treatment and the black guy is more likely to be sent to jail. Everything else the same except for race. Check the stats. The Appalachian hick guy is fucked up, which is not cool, but if he were black, he’d be fucked up plus. He also said to Professor Hunk: Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can’t we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied—that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that.

Ifemelu imagined them when they travelled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.

Does nobody see how absurd it is to ask people if they are ready for a black president? Are you ready for Mickey Mouse to be president? How about Kermit the Frog? And Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

They seemed like strangers. They looked the same, but the dignity she remembered was gone, and left instead something small, a provincial eagerness.

She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts—it 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

When you watch television and hear that a “racist slur” was used, you must immediately become offended. Even though you are thinking “But why won’t they tell me exactly what was said?” Even though you would like to be able to decide for yourself how offended to be, or whether to be offended at all, you must nevertheless be very offended.