Liking this book a lot.
Quotes I’d talk over with students…
“I still have photographs, but I no longer know what my father looked like.”
(p.49)
“Writing is difficult, reading impossible. People are so exhausted after the hassle of a normal Lagos day that, for the vast majority, mindless entertainment is preferable to any other kind. This is the secret price paid for all those cumulative stresses of Lagos life: the ten-minute journeys that take forty-five minutes, the rarity of places of refuge, the constant confrontation with needs more abject than your own. By day’s end, the mind is worn, the body ragged.” (p. 68)
“Why is history uncontested here? There is no sign of that dispute over words, that battle over versions of stories that marks the creative inner life of a society. Where are the contradictory voices? I step out of the shop into the midday glare. All around me the unaware forest of flickering faces is visible. The area boys are still hard at work, but I imagine they will soon break for lunch. The past is not even past.” (p.117)
This quote I’d like to leave the opening identifier blank and ask students to fill it in or what it would mean to fill it in:
“______s do not always have the philosophical equipment to deal with the material goods they are so eager to consume. We fly planes but we do not manufacture aircraft, much less engage in aeronautical research. We use cell phones but do not make them. But, more important, we do not foster the ways of thinking that lead to the development of telephones or jet engines. Pat of that philosophical equipment is an attention to details: a rejection of only the broad outlines of a system, a commitment to precision, an engagement with the creative and scientific spirit behind what one uses.”
Is this true of Nigerians? Of Americans? Of Africans? Of urban or rural residents? Of Whites? Blacks? Can such a statement be true? Could you love your country and your people and make such a claim? How would you feel if such a statement were made about you?
Teju Cole, Every Day Is for the Thief (New York: Random House, 2014).
