Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

how could a string of words make a person ache for a place he did not know?

they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.

They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well-fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages,

but merely hungry for choice an...

where boundaries were blurred, where work blended into life, and bosses were called Mummy.