Imbolo Mbue Quotes

Who knows what kind of marriage they have? The kinds of marriage people have in this country, Bo, very strange. It's not like back home where a man can do as he sees fit and a woman follows him. Over here it's reversed. Women tell their men what they want and the men do it, because they say happy wife, happy life. This society is funny.

It's the fear that kills us, Leah," Jende said. "Sometimes it happens and it's not even as bad as the fear. That is what I have learned in this life. It is the fear.

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And

I think the story is our best chance for asylum. We claim persecution based on belonging to a particular social group, We weave a story about how you're afraid of going back home because you're afraid your girlfriend's family wants to kill you so you two don't get married.'
'That sounds like something that would happen in India," Winston said, "No one does anything like that in Cameroon.

the problem is not some system. It is us. Each of us. We've got to fix ourselves before we can fix a whole damn country.

Its regurgitation in newspapers of record and blogs of repute would be another reminder why the American society as a whole could never be call itself highbrow, why its easy availability of of stories on the private lives of others was turning adults, who would otherwise be enriching their minds with worthwhile knowledge, into juveniles who needed the satisfaction of knowing that others were more pathetic than them.

Why should a man intentionally live his life with one kind of anxiety followed by another?

He would marry his kind because a man like him needed a woman who understood his heart, shared his values and interests, knew how to give him the things he needed, accepted that his children must be raised in the same manner in which his parents had raised him, and only a woman from his homeland could do that.

She shrugged: just like him to think of all the bad things that could happen. "Someday is not today,

while there existed great towns and cities all over the world, there was a certain kind of pleasure, a certain type of adventurous and audacious childhood, that only New York City could offer a child.

Rich father, rich mother, rich husband. I'm sure her whole life she's never known what it's like to worry about money." Licking

I don't know if I can continue suffering like this just because I want to live in America.

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life.

He didn't say it; he had to keep his desperation from bursting through the thin layer of dignity it had been wrapped in throughout the interview. Clark smiled and patted him on the arm.

Germany was his favorite place to live, he said, because, even as a child, he could tell how much the Germans loved Americans, and it felt great to be loved for his nationality.

Cindy had told her to take as much as she wanted from the storage space in the attic because whatever she didn't take was going to charity, so Neni had cheerfully obliged, taking an old Louis Vuitton carry-on suitcase with a broken zipper, jam-packing it like roasted peanuts in a liquor bottle, and tying it shut with one of her blouses.

But the Universe gives us different sources of Love to unite us all as One. Who are we to decide what the source of our Love should be at any given time? Love is Love, and at any given point we have everything we need.

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing.

You know what I'm realizing now?" he said to her. "What?" she asked, looking at him adoringly. "We are sitting in the center of the world." She laughed. "You're so funny." "No, think about it," he said. "Columbus Circle is the center of Manhattan. Manhattan is the center of New York. New York is the center of America, and America is the center of the world. So we are sitting in the center of the world, right?

We cannot go around worrying about what the judge is going to decide. We just have to keep living.

Just to have somewhere that you can wake up in the morning and go to is a good thing. But what about the future? That is the problem, sir. I could not even marry my wife. I did - " "What do you mean, you couldn't marry? Poor people get married every day." "Yes, they can, sir. Everyone can marry, sir. But not everyone can marry the person that they want.

My advice to someone like you is to always stay close to the gray area and keep yourself and your family safe. Stay away from any place where you can run into police-that's the advice I give to you and to all young black men in this country. The police is for the protection of white people, my brother. Maybe black women and black children sometimes, but not black men. Never black men. Black men and police are palm oil and water. You understand me, eh?

His years on earth had taught him that good things happen to those who honor the kindheartedness of others.

Vince doesn't see this side of you, sir. He sees a father who works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides you do not see because you are their child. It is only now that I am old that I look at some things that my father did and I understand.

How dare you mention it in front of him?" "I didn't know he was listening." "You don't need to know anything, Neni. You don't have to know who is listening to what you're saying. You only need to learn how to shut your mouth sometimes.

As far as Immigration is concerned, there are many things that are illegal and many that are gray, and by 'gray' I mean the things that are illegal but which the government doesn't want to spend time worrying about. You understand me, abi? My advice to someone like you is to always stay close to the gray area and keep yourself and your family safe. Stay away from any place where you can run into police- that's the advice I give to you and to all young black men in this country. The police is for the protection of white people, my brother. Maybe black women and black children sometimes, but not black men. Never black men' (74).