They meet as teenagers, around the same age as Romeo and Juliet. They fall in love. Their families aren't warring, but their love is visa-crossed. When frequent strikes paralyze the university system in Nigeria, Ifemelu gets a scholarship to study in the U.S. Obinze stays behind. He plans to join her once he graduates, but the blond-bearded man at the embassy in Lagos tells him, "Sorry, you don't qualify."
Time was, that would have been the end of it. In migration stories of old--from Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake--when emigrants left the formerly colonized world for...
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