Ifemelu is a young Nigerian woman who has just arrived in the US to study.

She finds that her aunt Uju has

developed a relationship with an unsuitable (but financially secure) Nigerian expat called Bartholomew.
The first meeting of Ifemelu and Bartholomew does not go well ...

"A girl in Nigeria will never wear that kind of dress," Bartholemew said. "Look at that.
This country has no moral compass."
Ifemelu should not have spoken, but there was something about Bartholomew that
made silence impossible, the exaggerated caricature that he was, with his back-shaft
haircut unchanged since he came to America thirty years ago and his false over-heated 5
moralities. He was one of those people who, in his village back home, would be called
'lost'. He went to America and got lost, his people would say. He went to America and
refused to come back.
"Girls in Nigeria wear dresses much shorter than that o," Ifemelu said. "In secondary
school, some of us changed in our friends' houses so our parents wouldn't know." 10
Aunty Uju turned to her, eyes narrowed in warning. Bartholemew looked at her and
shrugged, as though she was not worth responding to. Dislike simmered between them.
For the rest of the afternoon, he ignored her. He would, in the future, often ignore her.
Later, she read his online posts on Nigerian Village. All of them sour-toned and strident,
under the moniker "Igbo Massachusetts Accountant", and it surprised her how profusely 15
he wrote, how actively he pursued airless arguments.
He had not been back to Nigeria in years and perhaps he needed the consolation of
those online groups, where small observations flared and blazed into attacks, personal
insults flung back and forth. Ifemelu imagined the writers, Nigerians in bleak houses in
America, their lives deadened by work, nursing their careful savings throughout the year 20
so that they could visit home in December for a week when they would arrive bearing
suitcases of shoes and clothes and cheap watches, and see, in the eyes of their relatives,
brightly burnished images of themselves. Afterwards they would return to America to
fight on the Internet over their mythologies of home, because home was now a blurred
place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of 25
how inconsequential they had become.
Nigerian women came to America and became wild, Igbo Massachusetts Accountant
wrote in one post; it was an unpleasant truth but one that had to be said. What else
accounted for the high divorce rates among Nigerians in America and the low rates
among Nigerians in Nogeria? Delta Mermaid replied that women simply had laws 30
protecting them in America and the divorce rates would just as high if those laws were
in Nigeria. Igbo Massachusetts Accountant's rejoinder: You have been brainwashed by
the West. You should be ashamed to call yourself Nigerian. In response to Eze Houston,
who wrote that Nigerian men were cynical when they went back to Nigeria looking for
nurses and doctors to marry, only so that the new wives would earn money for them 35
back in America, Igbo Massachusetts Accountant wrote, What is wrong with a man
wanting financial security from his wife. Don't women want the same thing?

from Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)

© David Ripley, Inthinking

www.englishb-inthinking.co.uk
Decoding metaphors
The passage contains a lot of phrases based on words which are not used according to their
literal meaning, but rather to express an new and different sense. In each case, (i) identify the
literal meaning of the word(s); and (ii) explain what the metaphorical meaning is, in context.

1. "no moral compass" (l.2)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................
2. "over-heated moralities" (ll.5-6)
literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

3. "Dislike simmered" (l.12)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

4. "sour-toned and strident" (l.14)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

5. "airless arguments" (l.16)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

6. "flared and blazed" (l.18)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

7. "deadened by work" (l.20)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

8. "brightly burnished images of themselves" (l.23)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

9. "mythologies of home" (l.24)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

10. "blurred place between here and there" (ll.24-25)

literal meaning ......................................................................................................
metaphorical meaning ..........................................................................................

© David Ripley, Inthinking

www.englishb-inthinking.co.uk