Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings 1

In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person’s tribe could determine whom he married.

At last she said, “You don’t really mean that he will object to your marrying me simply on that account? I had always thought you Ibos were kindly disposed to other people.”

His father did not believe his ears. “What did you say?” he asked slowly and disconcertingly.

This was his pet subject, and he condemned vehemently those church leaders who encouraged women to teach in their schools.

After he had spent his emotion on a long homily he at last came back to his son’s engagement, in a seemingly milder tone.

When he sent for Nnaemeka a day later he applied all possible ways of dissuasion. But the young man’s heart was hardened, and his father eventually gave him up as lost.

This man had come with others to commiserate with Okeke when news went round about his son’s behavior.

The discussion thus tending to become theological, Madubogwu, a highly practical man, brought it down once more to the ordinary level.

“I shall not call in a native doctor.” Nnaemeka’s father was known to be obstinately ahead of his more superstitious neighbors in these matters.

When Nene read through this letter and looked at the mutilated picture her eyes filled with tears, and she began to sob.

Their women, when they met at their village meeting, were not hostile to Nene. Rather, they paid her such excessive deference as to make her feel she was not one of them.