BEST BOOK I'VE READ IN A LONG TIME!!!!
Okri Words I Loved...
* This was borrowed from the BK library so I couldn't highlight as much as I normally would*
Calendar
"This is the season when they bury the children who cannot be carried to the doctor on the other side of that river... this is also the season when the women drink the blue-black juice... to do away with the babies in their wombs--the ones who would be born only to be buried next season." (11)
Maybe
"As we linger over the last of our luxuries ... we don't say what we both know...That the first thing we have to do is pay the landlord...my teacher..owner of the tea shop... Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be." (29)
City Rules
"'You will make us proud,' Ama says, 'as the first member of our family to leave the mountain. And perhaps at festival time next year, your mistress will let you come back to visit. Then you can tell us all about the world beyond this one.'" (51)
Hunger
"And so she says she'll starve me until I submit. What she does not realize is that I already know hunger." (111)
Lucky to be with Habib
"After a while, I don't know how long, another sound interrupts the rhythmic thud of the headboard. I know this noise from somewhere. I work very hard to make it out. Finally, I identify it. It is the muffled sound of sobbing. Habib rolls off me. Then I understand: I was the person crying." (121)
What is Normal
"How they can eat and laugh and carry on as normal when soon the men will come is so perplexing that, while they laugh, I fight back tears." (137)
Two Worlds
"And so I consider a world so ugly that a child would be maimed for life to fetch an extra rupee or two. and another world full of brides and marigolds, rain machines and white horses." (168)
An Accidental Kindness
"He held me. Perhaps it was an accident...But I could feel myself, my true self, give in to the simple pleasure of being held..." (176)
The Cost of a Curse
"... and for a moment, I love her. I love her like a mother, for giving me the medicine that will stop the fever and the sweating and the chills and the shaking. I love her for not throwing me out on the street, for caring for me." (190)
"'Take these pills tonight and you'll be back at work in no time.... You'll be able to work off the cost of the medicine in a few days.' And then she is gone. And try as I might, I cannot bring back my dreams." (191)
The Living Dead
heartbreaking.
A World Too Small
"He lifts the trunk, his skinny arms straining at the weight, and I wonder how long those little arms will last breaking stones." (199)
A Secret
"But most of all, I am afraid to imagine a life outside this place." (208)
The Street Boy
"And each day when he comes to our room, I turn my back so I will not be tempted to spend even a single rupee on a luxury I have learned to live without" (211)
Another American
"...mutters something in a language I cannot understand. He is not a good American. He is just another drunk." (222)
Any Man, Every Man
"I will be with them all... Any man, every man... I will do whatever it takes to get out of her." (227)
Monster
"Only a monster could do what she does to innocent girls. But I wonder. If the crying of a young girl is the same to me as the bleating of the horns in the street below, what have I become?" (231)
• 17 September 2023 | Brooklyn, NYC •