Best 36 quotes of Uzodinma Iweala on MyQuotes

Uzodinma Iweala

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    And now the woman is praying to God............... I am laughing laughing because God is forgetting everybody in this country.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Are you lost if you know where you're going-- just not how to get there?

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Good, he says, trust your judgement.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    He is patriotic but not sentimental so Mom and I think the placement is ironic but it stays because Dad sometimes feels like a minority in his own home.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    He watches Meredith toss her long brown hair over her shoulder so that we can see the single diamond stud suspended just beneath her collarbones on a thin gold chain. She rolls it between her fingers and it makes her look delicate and pretty. Rowan thinks she does it to look pretty because he thinks all women do all things to look either pretty or fuckable. He has always though Meredith pretty. Now he thinks her fuckable.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    He watches Meredith toss her long brown hair over her shoulder so that we can see the single diamond stud suspended just beneath her collarbones on a thin gold chain. She rolls it between her fingers and it makes her look delicate and pretty. Rowan thinks she does it to look pretty because he thinks all women do all things to look either pretty or fuckable. He has always thought Meredith pretty. Now he thinks her fuckable.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    I'm late, the kind of late that suggest I have no regard for the emotional health of my Nigerian parents who probably think I've been kidnapped by the enemies of progress.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    I'm still me, I want to say to him, your son, but that would hardly help if I am currently everything wrong with the world.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    I'm walking walking walking to where the sun is setting. I'm looking at it and wanting to catch it in my hand and to be squeezing until color are dripping out from it forever. That way everywhere it is always dark and nobody is ever having to see any of the terrible thing that is happening in this world.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    I've always felt weird about coming to Nigeria. Everything is always so overwhelming and aggressive from the moment we step out of the airport and into a country that my father loves so deeply he had to run away from it. But I've never had a choice. No one has ever asked me. Each summer, my father's momentum dragged us all home.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    I want to hug him, to hold him, but I also want to slap him until he can see that, objectively, his life is almost perfect. The world loves him; it takes him seriously; Harvard takes him seriously.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Meredith has held faith for the last five months that Harvard will have faith in her-- even after the initial early deferral. They have to. She is smart and her parents are important.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Meredith stands in a corner with a beer in her hand but she's not smiling. Her nails are painted purple and gold like her teammates but she didn't run today. She didn't even show up. She hasn't returned my calls and won't look at me. I can't stop staring at her. She holds her beer like a professional, like a woman in a commercial with long beautifully delicate but strong hands. Her top has spaghetti straps and plunges down the back so she can't wear a bra. With eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss highlighting her features she looks a little older, more sophisticated and more noticeable. Rowan has noticed her. He keeps watching her with his tiny eyes. He holds a cup full of punch, then he holds two cups full of punch. The he holds a cup full of punch and a beer. He wears a Princeton hat because that's wear he'll go next year, but it is tattered and old because he has always known he is going there. That is why he never has any fucks to give-- because his family can afford not to give them.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Meredith stands in a corner with a beer in her hand but she's not smiling. Her nails are painted purple and gold like her teammates but she didn't run today. She didn't even show up. She hasn't returned my calls and won't look at me. I can't stop staring at her. She holds her beer like a professional, like a woman in a commercial with long beautifully delicate but strong hands. Her top has spaghetti straps and plunges down the back so she can't wear a bra. With eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss highlighting her features she looks a little older, more sophisticated and more noticeable. Rowan has noticed her. He keeps watching her with his tiny eyes. He holds a cup full of punch, then he holds two cups full of punch. The he holds and cup full of punch and a beer. He wears a Princeton hat because that's wear he'll go next year, but it is tattered and old because he has always known he is going there. That is why he never has any fucks to give-- because his family can afford not to give them.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Ms. Connell sighs because wealth does not equate to good manners.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    My father and I look up and then at each other. I can feel my heart separate from the rest of my body. I want to hand it to frothing old man in front of me and say, take it. It's yours, because it has always been yours, if not for your sperm, your food, and the school fees that you pay on my behalf, then who and where would I be? Nothing. I am because you are. I say nothing. Each word I search for flies from my brain before I can send it off my tongue.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    My grandfather lived alone in this room with no one to love for twenty-six years. That kind of loneliness takes real strength.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Niru, you're welcome to stay if you want, Ms. McConnell says to me without looking up from her desk. Without students in the classroom she is much smaller and more feminine. I stare at her legs visible beneath her desk and at the way her blonde hair falls about her face as she reads the New Yorker. Porn makes it look so easy, so casual, so routine. Older women are supposed to crave fresh young meat, to lick their pen tops absentmindedly while thinking about us, to squeeze their legs together in a good faith effort to keep from corrupting the younger generations. And I am supposed to stumble forward both confused and uncontrolled, pulled by my relentless desire like light towards a black hole. Except I am unmoved. I imagine Ms. McConnell naked, perched at the edge of her desk, legs crossed waiting for me to cross the room and give her what she needs. That's how they always say it, that they will take what they want, get what they need, that hardcore sex is good punishment for bad behavior. I wonder if it would set the record straight for me. It's nice outside, Ms. McConnell says, you should enjoy the day. Her stare makes me feel like she can read my thoughts and I am suddenly embarrassed.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    No one has called me. They all think I'm toxic or damaged, or both. I cannot stop crying so Dad holds me while Mom stands in the doorway with her half-open mouth and palms against her chest. Dad rocks me and whispers to me. He sings a little song in my ear as he dries my naked body with a towel while Mom stands in the doorway. He carries me to my bed, rests me head on his knees and lets my tears and snot soak dark spots into his white trousers.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    OJ says our father lives somewhere between the self-satisfaction that his success has made us soft and disgust that we are unacquainted with the brutal intensity of a world that he has effectively tamed for us.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    OJ says you only feel your skin at your best and worst moments so right now I can feel all of my skin, on my fingers, on my face, full of itch and fire.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    See over there, I can be me, he says. I smile but it makes me sad. I haven't found any safe spaces. Damien says, you're safe with me. Until I'm not. He raises an eyebrow. With you I mean, I add. I dream about an internship on the West Coast, but there is nothing for me to do. I am not the president's daughter. I've never met a movie star. I barely watch television.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    She says, enough, enough, just enough. It's too much already, I've never-- thank God-- had a problem with any of my children, but now all of a sudden it's like you are three different people and I don't ever know which one I'm going to get. It's exhausting, you hear me, you are exhausting me. Can we not just have some real, genuine peace in this house? Between you and your father everyone here is always walking around like someone has died or is about to die. Or people are shouting or sulking or whatever it is you men do. You see my hair. You people are making me old! For once can someone not fucking shout at me for something, I say, I can't wait until I'm out of this stupid fucking place and no one can yell at me. My mother's mouth falls open and her eyes lock on my face. She has heard me swear before, on the phone when joking with some friends but never have I said any such thing to either one of my parents. Never. I have always assumed that such an event would result in my being beaten within an inch of my unborn grandchild's life, but she just stands there like a malfunctioning robot. Is anyone keeping you here, she says finally. If you are unhappy, please go. Go and find the place where you feel happy. I'm sorry, I say, but it's too late. I've fucked up. The less I've said the better things have been, the less likely my father has seemed ready to pounce on me for the smallest mistake. If she tells him what has happened, this might be the end. I'm really sorry. My hands smell of cucumber as I wipe my nose. She tosses the vegetable peeler in her hand to the counter between us. Its protected blades glint in the sunlight streaming through the large bay windows. Do what you like, she says. Mommy, wait please, I say. Get out of here, I don't want to talk to you. Not like this, in my house, my mother says. Her voice is flat and hard, her eyes fixed directly to mine. Ypu should go and find whatever it is you want to find. Me, sef, I'm tired, I'm going upstairs, she says. I listen to her reach the top stair, enter her bedroom, and shut the door. It's just me now.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Sometimes it seems like he just wants to punish someone, anyone, for a long list of grievances that he has never made clear, which you can never ask about because he keeps his emotions so guarded that any question would be interpreted as assault. I wonder if dragging us to this village and the nearby town wear he spent his childhood is a way of sinking us all into his own personal hell so that we can see how this strange combination of poverty and opportunity, these broken and muddy roads, these crumbling houses, these overburdened men and women walking slowly in these streets singing praise songs to keep themselves going, created the strange combination of love and anger and pride and fear that is my father. He always sat in the passenger seat while we drove around the village so he could fully view what he sometimes called a world of wasted opportunity. With OJ or my mother in the car, he pointed out all the things he would make right if only he had the power. With me now, he says nothing. Occasionally he turns to look at me with the same expression that occupies his face when he has to solve a problem at the office. I sink down in my seat and wish that my mother had come.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Sometimes I wonder who my mother might be if she weren't married to my father. Everyone around him seems that much less free-spirited, that much less open to possibility, so much more controlled. At her office she is loud and filled with infectious laugher. Here she is more quiet and deferential. I can cut a cucumber, I say more sharply than I intend. She winces and busies herself with searching for a vegetable peeler, if only to make a point.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    so we were playing all this game then and thinking that to be a soldier was to be the best thing in the world because gun is looking so powerful and the men in movie are looking so powerful and strong when they are killing people,but I am knowing now that to be a soldier is only to be weak and not strong, and to have no food to eat and not to eat whatever you want, and also to have people making you do thing that you are not wanting to do and not to be doing whatever you are wanting which is what they are doing in movie. But I am only knowing this now because I am soldier now.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    The boys relax against the mango tree trunks shirtless as they wait for my father to return. I should say something. I want to say something, but nothing comes. We live such different lives with such different worries. Who has time to think about sexual orientation when there is no food to eat, no money for school fees, no doctor in sight when you get sick. My father always says we take everything he and my mother have given us too lightly, that people risk drowning in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean for just one-tenth of what we have. He is not wrong. We have studied the Haitians coming to Florida in the nineties in history class. We even had an assembly with a Syrian doctor who told us how he got his his family away from ISIS and into Turkey. But I didn't chose my life any more than the boys beneath the mango trees chose theirs, any more than my father chose his.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    There is no one to laugh with about his cookies and milk, to gush about the fact that he is eighteen like I am eighteen only he seems much older.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    There is no one to speak to about my headache and stomachache when I leave my bedroom and encounter this beautiful prison that my parents have built, when I see pictures of me on the walls and side tables that bear no resemblance to the me they cannot see. Sometimes I stare at the family that owns me and I wish I were a different person, with white skin and the ability to tell my mother and my father, especially my father, to fuck off without consequence, and sometimes I stare at the white cards of the Bible verses Reverend Olumide has gifted me and think that there is still a chance to change my ways.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    The streets are empty and quiet this early in the morning and I can hear my own footsteps as they fall. I can never forget the imperfections in these brick sidewalks, where they rise and dip around tree roots, where loose segments can make you stumble and fall. Mom is right, the morning is cooler than I expected, but I am committed to the cold air sting that will soon turn to an unbearably soggy heat. Such is the way of a city built on a swamp.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    This is supposed to be my season to carve my own space if I play my cards right[...] Do I want it? I want so many things, so many competing things. I want to run to win, to run away from myself, to run away from home.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Washington, D.C. is so confusing in the spring. The days grow increasingly hot and humid, but the nights hold on to winter for as long as possible. On some days the grass is still frosted over in the mornings, stiff and crunchy, even if it wilts before the first class starts. If you are not careful you get caught in the weather's nostalgia and at night, a windbreaker or a sweater isn't enough.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    Was that too much too fast, he asks. I thought you wanted me to, I thought that's why you came-- why did you come? The fountain is in full flair, sending water down the terraces to froth in the lily pad pond below. From this point we can see all the way to the White House and all the buildings between, locked in place, unmoved. I came because you have showed me something inside me that I can't control, because now the world before with its rules and requirements is not enough, I want to say, but I cannot speak.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    When I am saying all of this, she is just looking at me and I am seeing water in her eye. So I am saying to her, if I am telling this to you it will be making you to think that I am some sort of beast or devil. Amy is never saying anything when I am saying this, but the water is just shining in her eye. And I am saying to her, fine. I am all of this thing. I am all of this thing, but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker number thirty-two.

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    Uzodinma Iweala

    You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two.