The word appears 9 times.
The novel is about black people, so the language is colloquial and sprinkled with the word throughout.
Women work, he say.
What? she say.
Women work. I'm a man.
You're a triffling nigger, she say. You git that bucket and bring it back full. He cut his eye at me. Stumble out. I hear him mutter something to Mr. ________ sitting on the porch. Mr. _________ call his sister. She stay out on the porch talking a little while, then she come back in, shaking
Shug say, What, to shamefaced to put singing and dancing and fucking together? She laugh. That's the reason they call what us sing the devil's music. Devil's love to fuck. Listen, sh say, Let's go sing one night at Harpo place. Be like old times for me. And if I bring you before the crowd, they better listen with respect. Niggers don't know how to act bit if you git through the first half of one saong, you got 'em.
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going - we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
All I let myself think about was how the clerk treated me. I was acting like somebody because I was Samuel's wife, and a Spelman Seminary graduate, and he treated me like any ordinary nigger. Oh my feelings were hurt! And I was mad!
Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he'd have to have it conked before anyone paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair is kinky.
That's the truth, I say
Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad because he don't seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say?
A lot of drinking in that family, say Jack. Plus, they can't keep that boy of theirs in college. He get drunk, aggravate his sister, chase women, hunt niggers and that ain't all.
She say seem like to her the Africans throwed out the white Olinka peoples for how they look. They throwed out the rest of us, all us who became slaves, for how us act. Seem like us just wouldn't do right no matter how us try. Well, you know how niggers is. Can't nobody tell 'em nothing even today. Can't be rule. Every nigger you see go a kingdom in his head.
Do her peoples know? I ask
They know, say Sofia. They carrying on just like you know they would. Whoever heard of a white woman working for niggers, they rave. She tell them, Whoever heard of somebody like Sofia working for trash.