The success of their marriage wasn’t determined by its happiness, but by the fact it was still going.

After twenty-nine years of everyone in the Koranteng family pretending they had no emotions other than anger, he was supposed to start talking about his feelings? He loved his mother dearly—she had sacrificed everything for her son, her family. But that didn’t mean he could confide in her.

How could he explain that his phone gave him anxiety, that every time it vibrated, panic rippled through his body?

They weren’t bad boys, his boys. But wasn’t that the issue? Why was “not bad” so often good enough?

It was funny, Ola thought briefly, how feminism had swung to now meet patriarchy in the middle, seemingly agreeing that what women wanted was everything to be pink and focused on making them look good.

He could promise him, truthfully, that he didn’t want to die. More, it was almost like he wished he’d never been born in the first place, which he knew sounded frightening but not as frightening as his future seemed.

men only have issues with abusive men outside of their immediate circle. The closer to home, the blinder their eye becomes.

It was disconcerting, how growing up he had felt both smothered and overlooked in the same household.

“It’s just interesting that you’ve been more than happy to talk about the importance of ‘believing women’ until the one time it actually requires personal sacrifice. And by ‘interesting’ I mean ‘total hypocritical fuckery.’”