Half of a Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

He felt grateful that she had pulled him into the conversation, included him, and he was charmed by that quality of hers that seemed both sophisticated and naïve, an idealism that refused to be suffocated by gritty reality.

The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.”

Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?

Sometimes she wondered if this was her own failure rather than his, if perhaps she lacked a certain strength that would compel him to include her in his pain.

“There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable,” Kainene said.

“I am not.” She would not place her memory on things that strangers could barge in and take away. “My memory is inside me.”