"It was exotic, and difficult to pronounce." Exotic in this sentence means...

"It was late September, and the leaves on the trees were beginning to turn from vibrant green to rusty red and mustard yellow." Vibrant in this sentence means...

"And while I imagined that Zimbabwe was radically different from suburban Pennsylvania, where I grew up, I had no idea how much." Suburban in this sentence means...

"But rendering days were even worse: The air filled with the stench of garbage cooked in bacon." Rendering in this sentence means...

"The smell would stick to your hair and clothes, like cigarette smoke, as it wafted into our classrooms' open windows on warm days back when our school didn't have air-conditioning." Wafted in this sentence means...

"There Kava and Romeo, our two giant schnauzers, would always be waiting for me, doing their welcome dance, which entailed wagging their whole bodies and jumping up and down at the same time." Entailed in this sentence means...

"She mentioned colonialism, a vaguely familiar word." Vaguely in this sentence means...

"That's how I discovered that Zimbabwe was "liberated" from the United Kingdom in 1980." Liberated in this sentence means...

"I was beginning to see parallels: The Africans wanted to be free from British rule, just as colonial Americans did two hundred years earlier." Parallels in the sentence means...

"When I turned in my letter to Mrs. Miller the following day, I felt giddy, like this was the start of something big." Giddy in this sentence means...

"I turned to see my mother jumping up and down, like a rabbit, ululating, which is how we celebrate." Ululating in this sentence means...

"She swatted it out of my hand with such ferocity." Ferocity in this sentence means...

"It was a housing development built in the 1960s as a place for men from the rural areas to stay during the week while they worked in different factories on the outskirts of Mutare, the third-largest city in Zimbabwe." Rural in this sentence means...

"Polygamy was not common back then, but it was also not a big deal." Polygamy in this sentence means...

"Each wife would swap every two weeks, commuting back and forth from the rural areas with her children." Commuting in this sentence means...

"It was chaotic. Some weeks, between our family and theirs, there were twelve people living and sleeping in a room intended for two." Chaotic in this sentence means...

"We'd usually hear him singing before we saw him, his husky voice bellowing a liberation song by Thomas Mapfumo, a Zimbabwean legend." Husky in this sentence means...

"We'd usually hear him singing before we saw him, his husky voice bellowing a liberation song by Thomas Mapfumo, a Zimbabwean legend." Bellowing in this sentence means...

"My dad used the word "inflation" to explain why we no longer ate bread, which rose in price overnight from two to five dollars." Inflation in this sentence means...

"Electricity was rationed from six PM to six AM, though sometimes it did not come on at all." Rationed in this sentence means...