We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.

Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you love.

I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America

I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.

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.