Excerpt from CNA's AMERICANNAH

 “So funny how you say that word, Coz, fools.” 

He paused and then repeated her words, 

“Those people in your school are fools,”   

in a good mimicry of a Nigerian accent. 

She told him the story of the Nigerian pastor who, 

while giving a sermon in a church in 

America, said something about a beach but

 because of his accent, his parishioners thought he had said “bitch”

and they wrote to his bishop to complain. 

Dike laughed and laughed. It became one of

their stock jokes. “Hey, Coz, I just want to 

spend a summer day at the bitch,” he would say.