Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

She was taking two sides at once, to please everyone; she always chose peace over truth, was always eager to conform.

“If anything happens between you and Obinze, you are both responsible. But Nature is unfair to women. An act is done by two people, but if there are any consequences, one person carries it alone. Do you understand me?”

He was upbeat, relentlessly so, in a way that only an American of his kind could be, and there was an infantile quality to this that she found admirable and repulsive.