How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
When Nnu Ego later confided in Cordelia, the wife of Ubani, she had laughed at her moanings about her husband and had said to her, "You want a husband who has time to ask you if you wish to eat rice, or drink corn pap with honey? Forget it. Men here are too busy being white men's servants to be men. We women mind the home. Not our husbands. Their manhood has been taken away from them. The shame of it is that they don't know it. All they see is the money, shining white man's money"
"But," Nnu Ego had protested, "My father released his slaves because the white man says it is illegal. Yet these our husbands are like slaves, don't you think?"
"They are all slaves, including us. If their masters treat them badly, they take it out on us. The only difference is that they are given some pay for their work, instead of having been bough. But the pay is just enough for us to rent an old room like this." (4.66-68)
Nnu Ego points out the hypocrisy of whites in Nigeria: they outlaw slavery for the black master but then enslave blacks themselves.
Quote #5
"Oh, you people living with the white men. I never can make out which room or house belongs to which cook or which washerman. So I had to call you from the street." (7.13)
Ato points out that whites have so many servants, that blacks like her get lost inside their compound. The discrepancy between the lifestyles of whites and blacks constitutes another big difference between the races in Lagos.
Quote #6
"I know, loving and caring are more difficult for our men. But Nnaife is very loving; you see, he copies the white people he works for. He is not bad in the other way, too…" (7.24)
Nnu Ego admits that Nnaife is good at sex, but also good at loving her. She believes that this is something he learned from the Meers.