Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's accomplished third novel is a subtly provocative exploration of oppression and the idea of home....
“Americanah” tells the story of a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman
named Ifemelu who, after she leaves Africa for America, endures several
harrowing years of near destitution before graduating from college,
starting a blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations About
American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American
Black” and winning a fellowship at Princeton (as Adichie once did; she
has acknowledged that many of Ifemelu’s experiences are her own). Ever
hovering in Ifemelu’s thoughts is her high school boyfriend, Obinze, an
equally intelligent if gentler, more self-effacing Nigerian, who
outstays his visa and takes illegal jobs in London. (When Obinze trips
and falls to the ground, a co-worker shouts, “His knee is bad because
he’s a knee-grow!”)
Ifemelu and Obinze represent a new kind of immigrant, “raised well fed
and watered but mired in dissatisfaction.” They aren’t fleeing war or
starvation but “the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.” Where Obinze
fails — soon enough, he is deported — Ifemelu thrives, in part because
she seeks authenticity. Never has Ifemelu felt as free as the day she
stops hiding her Nigerian accent under an American one, the accent that
convinces telemarketers she is white. She refuses to straighten her hair
(a favorite Web site is HappilyKinkyNappy.com), even if she must endure
muttered disparagements from African-Americans when out with a white
man — “You ever wonder why he likes you looking all jungle like that?”
Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemelu reeling, and years later, when
she returns to Nigeria, she’s still haunted by it. Meantime, back in
Lagos, Obinze has found wealth as a property developer. Though the book
threatens to morph into a simple story of their reunion, it stretches
into a scalding assessment of Nigeria, a country too proud to have
patience for “Americanahs” — big shots who return from abroad to
belittle their countrymen — and yet one that, sometimes unwittingly,
endorses foreign values. (Of the winter scenery in a school’s Christmas
pageant, a parent asks, “Are they teaching children that a Christmas is
not a real Christmas unless snow falls like it does abroad?”)
“Americanah” is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both
worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting
realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false.
Nonetheless, this is an impressive novel – although very different from Adichie's Orange prize-winning Half of a Yellow Sun,
it shares some of its freewheeling, zesty expansiveness. But that
should not disguise its delicacy; it is also an extremely thoughtful,
subtly provocative exploration of structural inequality, of different
kinds of oppression, of gender roles, of the idea of home. Subtle, but
not afraid to pull its punches. We all wish race was not an issue, says
Ifemelu, talking about inter-racial relationships at a polite Manhattan
dinner party, the day after Obama becomes the presidential candidate:
"But it's a lie. 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."
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.