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Adah’s Ma is a seamstress from Ibuza who now lives in Lagos. As a child, Adah believes that her mother is the major obstacle to her going to school. When Adah sneaks off to school while her Ma isn’t looking, her Ma is briefly arrested for child neglect—yet when a policeman, learning the whole story, comments that Ma and Pa should send Adah to school because she seems to want to learn, Ma looks at Adah with “fear, love and wonder”—suggesting that Ma cares for and admires Adah, even if she doesn’t understand Adah’s ambitions. After Pa dies, Ma goes to live with Pa’s brother and then remarries, which makes Adah angry. When Adah is around 11, Ma starts trying to betroth her to rich old men who can pay an expensive “bride price” for her, though Adah succeeds in scaring them off and winning a scholarship to boarding school. When teenage Adah marries a poor student, Francis, Ma doesn’t attend Adah’s wedding because she’s so angry that Adah has married someone unable to pay the bride price the family asked. Shortly thereafter, Ma dies at age 38. Adah’s difficult relationship to Ma makes it harder for her to make female friends as an adult.
Adah’s Ma Quotes in Second Class Citizen
The Second Class Citizen quotes below are all either spoken by Adah’s Ma or refer to Adah’s Ma. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1: Childhood
Quotes
She was not even quite sure that she was exactly eight, because, you see, she was a girl. She was a girl who had arrived when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy. So, since she was such a disappointment to her parents, to her immediate family, to her tribe, nobody thought of recording her birth. She was so insignificant.
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Chapter 2: Escape into Elitism
Quotes
Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property.
Chapter 5: An Expensive Lesson
Quotes
She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.
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Adah’s Ma Quotes in Second Class Citizen
The Second Class Citizen quotes below are all either spoken by Adah’s Ma or refer to Adah’s Ma. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1: Childhood
Quotes
She was not even quite sure that she was exactly eight, because, you see, she was a girl. She was a girl who had arrived when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy. So, since she was such a disappointment to her parents, to her immediate family, to her tribe, nobody thought of recording her birth. She was so insignificant.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2: Escape into Elitism
Quotes
Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property.
Chapter 5: An Expensive Lesson
Quotes
She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.
