Ifeoma Quotes

Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.

It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't.

Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.

Aunty Ifeoma was silent as she ladled the thick cocoyam paste into the soup pot; then she looked up and said Papa-Nnukwu was not a heathen but a traditionalist, that sometimes what was different was just as good as what was familiar, that when Papa-Nnukwu did his itu-nzu, his declaration of innocence, in the morning, it was the same as our saying the rosary.

Aunty Ifeoma came the next day, in the evening, when the orange trees started to cast long, wavy shadows across the water fountain in the front yard. Her laughter floated upstairs into the living room, where I sat reading. I had not heard it in two years, but I would know that cackling, hearty sound anywhere. Aunty Ifeoma was as tall as Papa, with a well-proportioned body. She walked fast, like one who knew just where she was going and what she was going to do there. And she spoke the way she walked, as if to get as many words out of her mouth as she could in the shortest time.

Nwunye m, sometimes life begins when marriage ends.” “You and your university talk. Is this what you tell your students?” Mama was smiling. “Seriously, yes. But they marry earlier and earlier these days. What is the use of a degree, they ask me, when we cannot find a job after graduation?” “At least somebody will take care of them when they marry.” “I don’t know who will take care of whom. Six girls in my first-year seminar class are married, their husbands visit in Mercedes and Lexus cars every weekend, their husbands buy them stereos and textbooks and refrigerators, and when they graduate, the husbands own them and their degrees. Don’t you see?” Mama shook her head. “University talk again. A husband crowns a woman’s life, Ifeoma. It is what they want.” “It is what they think they want. But how can I blame them? Look what this military tyrant is doing to our country.

[Jaja] shifted on his seat and added, 'I should have taken care of Mama. Look how Obiora balances Aunty Ifeoma's family on his head, and I am older than he is. I should have taken care of Mama.

The difference between where you are and where you ought to be may be hinged on information- Ifeoma Samuel 2015

Everyone has their own path to success. Find yours.

the thought that she might be gone for a long time. Amaka and I said we would go with her. But Jaja said he would not go, then was stonily silent as if he dared anyone to ask him why. Obiora said he would stay back, too, with Chima. Aunty Ifeoma did not seem to mind. She smiled and said that since we didn’t have a male, she would ask Father Amadi if he wanted to accompany us. “I will turn into a bat if Father Amadi says yes,” Amaka said. But he did say yes. When Aunty Ifeoma hung up the phone after talking to him and said he would be coming with us, Amaka said, “It’s because of Kambili. He would never have come if not for Kambili.” Aunty Ifeoma drove us to the dusty village about two hours away. I sat in the back with Father Amadi, separated from him by the space in the middle. He and Amaka