1. Actual Quotation Marks i.e. "Stay here, Africa" : The author uses actual quotations in the novel when Achak is not recollecting his African memories. It seems as though Eggers utilizes quotations to distinguish between life in America as a Sudanese immigrant, while also representing Achak's adult lifestyle and mentality. I suppose when one is a child, then they are more apt to forgetting the right ways for grammar and punctuation, and Eggers shows the distinction from child and adult through the different usage of quotations and dashes. Furthermore, the quotation marks indicate actual conversation, and not merely some fictionalized conversation to move the story along.
2.Dashes i.e. --I don't care. Someday I might ride it faster. Not yet, though. : The dashes constitutes all of Achak's conversations back when he was a young refugee in Sudan. The dashes, which written on a page creates a flowy appearance, pushes Achak's recollection into that, a mere recollection. The language of the dashed conversation seems quick and intense, with a feeling of rush, and often the dashes conversation are grouped together like so:
"-Burned? By who? the boy asked. He was skeptical
-The Baggara, Deng answered.
-The Baggara? Why didn't you fight them?..." -p. 126
while the quotation marked conversations are more one liners before a lengthy explanation. The preface of the novel states that Valentino Achak Deng could not "recount some conversations that took place seventeen years ago." thereby constituting the dashes as a means for a shadowy and imagined conversation to help the story along.
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