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It is one of the things she has come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope.
Because America does not recognize Big Men. Nobody says “Sir! Sir!” to them in America. Nobody rushes to dust their seats before they sit down.
this country of curiosities and crudities, this country where you could drive at night and not fear armed robbers, where restaurants served one person enough food for three.
snaked its roots under her skin.
I will be forced to live a life cushioned by so much convenience that it is sterile. A life littered with what we call “opportunities.”
skin the color of peanut butter
was a flowering of extravagant hope,
what now propelled her life
American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one’s child were the exception rather than the rule. It
it was what they had become.
eyes that made her like herself.
“woman wrapper,”
he silent and gentle and firm, she loud and grasping and writhing.
the grayness that clouded her days, the hard things that had slipped in between them.
music of the name.
