Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: May 14, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.
As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.
Ifemelu and her boyfriend Obinze grew up in Nigeria. She immigrates to America for college. Obinze is not able to follow her and instead goes to England on a tourist visa that he overstays and winds up deported back to Nigeria.
Ifemelu becomes a successful blogger while she’s living in America – her blog is called Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Her blog entries, which are interspersed throughout the book offer biting, darkly humorous takes on race in America from Ifemelu’s point of view as an outsider looking in. At the same time, back in Nigeria, Obinze becomes wealthy, marries and has a child. After living in America for fifteen years, Ifemelu moves back to Nigeria and reunites with Obinze. They find that they must make some tough choices.
Americanah is about many things – love, immigration and race. Its Ifemelu’s observations on race in America really struck me and have stayed with me. She says, “”I came from a country where race was not an issue. I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America.” Throughout her time in America, she finds that she has certain expectations placed on her, good and bad, because she is Black. Like, when in one of her college classes all eyes were on her when the topic was slavery. When Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, she finds that America has changed her and she can’t easily integrate back into her old life. She is forever changed and now inhabits an in-between state – what her Nigerian friends call Americanah. Highly recommended.
