Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This was a hard book for me to read because it deals with an abusive father. The story was wonderful. I really enjoyed it, but some parts were difficult. My father was the exact opposite and it's so hard for me to imagine any male acting like this father does, but I know it happens.

She did not usually say so much at one time. She spoke the way a bird eats, in small amounts. p20

We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. p23

That night, I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma's. p88
I totally understand this girl. I really do. Different relationship as the cause, but I read this book completely understanding her and being jealous that she found a way out where I never really did.

"If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging, not Eugene." p95-96
This is talking about how Eugene says their father (his sister, Ifeoma is talking here) should be avoided because he worships pagan gods and whatnot. He hasn't converted to Christianity and Eugene won't allow his kids to go see their grandfather because of it. Eugene is VERY christian. You have to read the book to understand how deep this goes. What I like about this line is that it can apply to anyone who judges in the name of their god.

I had felt as if I were not there, that I was just observing a table where you could say anything at any time to anyone, where the air was free for you to breathe as you wished. p120
So totally capturing the feeling of being the quiet one trying to please everyone at the table with your silence and being amazed by the chatter at the same time.

I wanted some of the cloudlike warmth in Father Amadi's eyes to rub off on me, to settle on me. p137

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. p166
Again, nothing wrong with other faiths.

The afternoon played across my mind s I got out of the car in front of the flat. I had smiled, run, laughed. My chest was filled with something like bath foam. Light. The lightness was so sweet I tasted it on my tongue, the sweetness of an overripe bright yellow cashew fruit. p180

Even the silence that descended on the house was sudden, as though the old silence had broken and left us with the sharp pieces. p257

Mostly, though, she writes about things that she misses and things she longs for, as if she ignores the present to dwell on the past and future. p301

There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once. p301