Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart? Ifemulu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike's suicide attempt since she came back.

She had come to understand that 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 was the exception rather than the rule.

Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.

What is the point of culture? Culture functions ultimately to ensure the preservation and continuity of a people. (...) Culture does not make people. People make culture.

Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they seem them as relational rather than as individual equal humans. Men who, when discussing rape, will always say something like 'if it were my daughter or wife or sister.' Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.

La cultura no hace a la gente. La gente hace la cultura. Si es verdad que no forma parte de nuestra cultural el hecho de que las mujeres sean seres humanos de pleno derecho, entonces podemos y debemos cambiar nuestra cultura.

The longer she spent in America, the better she had become at distinguishing, sometimes from looks and gait, but mostly from bearing and demeanor, that fine-grained mark that culture stamps on people. (Chapter 17)

They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure,” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.