Americanah: A novel

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Americanah Americanah does in fact seem to be about several things. On one level, it is simply a love story, but, more significantly, it is about the immigrant experience. It is also about the black experience - the experience of American-Africans as opposed to that of African-Americans or of Africans. More deeply still, it delineates the complexities of national identities and ways of thinking. Much of this is accomplished through an exploration of the everyday issue of hair care. Kinky African hair is fragile, the author tells us, and it requires special handling. Products made for white people's hair simply won't do the trick. Much of Americanah is taken up with detailing the Nigerian-born heroine, Ifemelu's, quest for hair care. We see her spending long hours getting her hair braided, and even when she decides to let her hair go natural and sport an "Afro," that style, too, takes a lot of care and is the focus of her grooming regime. Ifemelu began life in a Nigeria which existed under military dictatorship. She attended a Lagos secondary school where she fell in love with Obinze. He would be the great love of her life. It was the dream of Ifemelu and Obinze to get out of Nigeria. It was a common dream as people were emigrating from the country whenever possible. Eventually, with the help of family, Ifemelu was able to go to America to study. Her early experiences in America were harrowing. She had little money, only what her family could send, and since she was on a student visa, she was unable to work, legally. A friend found a way for her to use someone else's Social Security number to look for a job. That, too, turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Desperate for work, she suffered a humiliating experience which continued to haunt her years later. Finally, her friend helped her connect with a white liberal couple who hired her as a babysitter for their two children. As well as being her employer, they become her friends and the remainder of Ifemelu's experience in America seems to be smooth sailing. Except for that hair thing. Finishing her undergraduate career, Ifemelu decides to start a blog about her observations on race. She calls it "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Know as Negroes) by a Non-American Black." In her blog, she takes on many of what some would consider taboo subjects. She writes, for example, about the relationship of styles of hair to employability. (There's that hair again!) She writes about what she regards as the misguided reverence that some African-Americans hold for Africa. She writes of her relationships with white and black lovers and her observations about how she is regarded by those men's friends. Meantime, Obinze is having his own immigrant experience in Britain. He overstays his visa and he, too, tries working on another person's national service number. Then, in order to legitimize his presence in the country, he plans a sham marriage to a British citizen, but he is found out and deported back to Nigeria where he begins to prosper. Years later, he is a wealthy businessman with a beautiful wife and daughter when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria. This book seems to me not so much plot-driven or even character-driven as observation-driven. The plot that exists is a structure for presenting Ifemelu's (i.e., Adichie's) opinions and social criticisms. These often appear in the guise of her blog entries. Such as this one: Understanding America for the Non-American Black: American Tribalism In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds - class, ideology, region, and race. First, class. Pretty easy. Rich folk and poor folk. Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don't merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. Intermarriage is discouraged and on the rare occasion that it happens, is considered remarkable. Third, region. The North and the South. The two sides fought a civil war and tough stains from that war remain. The North looks down on the South while the South resents the North. Finally, race. There's a ladder of racial hierarchy in America. White is always on top, specifically White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as WASP, and American Black is always on the bottom, and what's in the middle depends on time and place. That seems a very cogent summation of American society to me. And there are many such observations sprinkled throughout the book. They were among my favorite parts of the book. As a blogger myself, I was amused by Ifemelu's statement at one point that she never knew what her readers wanted or what they would like - what would generate a lot of clicks. She wrote posts which she was sure would be popular and would get a lot of response and there was nothing but silence. On the other hand, she might dash off a quick entry with no expectation of it striking a chord with readers and she would be overwhelmed by clicks and comments. I suppose this uncertainty is the bain of all bloggers. Maybe all writers. I enjoyed this book tremendously, although there were some things that bothered me. The character of Ifemelu, for example. She just seemed to glide effortlessly through life. Even the big emotional upsets of her life didn't really seem to upset her very much. For someone who was described as very passionate, she seemed substantially lacking in passion. In fact, all of the characters in the book seemed curiously flat and one-dimensional to me. I couldn't really care a lot about the fate of any of them. It appeared that Adichie couldn't either. They were simply vehicles for moving forward the story she wanted to tell. Moreover, I found the ending somewhat disappointing. It just didn't seem to me that this would have been the logical conclusion for these characters. But then, I am a white American woman of a certain age who has never lived outside of this country. What do I know about how these cosmopolitan world travelers would feel and behave? Throughout the last half of this book, which was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2013, I debated with myself about what rating I would give it - four stars or five stars. In the end, I decided that my quibbles were not sufficient to give it the lower rating. It was an amazing read, so I gave it five stars. But with the silent understanding that it really should have been four-and-a-half.

I am probably biased towards this novel, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, not only because Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which I read as a very young girl, awoke in me the possibility of good writing and beautiful prose by a Nigerian like me, but because of the familiarity of the book. In Nigeria, we are brought up on foreign movies, sitcoms and TV shows, foreign books and foreign news, we know how English should be spoken, and many of us who bother to read a lot, are very familiar with the colloquialisms of the west. This is perhaps why, we do not recognize how much we miss our own particularly Nigerian way of expression, in the literature we read. It is perhaps why, when we read a phrase that is essentially Nigerian, in a novel like Americanah, "Tina-Tina, how now?" "Why are you looking like a mumu?" "How will you cope/how are you coping?" all familiar Nigerian modes of speech, we are infinitely grateful. It's like the word Americanah, such a Nigerian word, used to describe someone who had lived abroad for so long, they no longer understand the nuances of being Nigerian. They use American swearwords, or complain that the fries at KFC Onikan are limp, even though you see nothing wrong with them. This is when you turn to someone who understands and say, (No mind am, na Americanah), Don't mind him, he is an Americanah. Adichie's latest follows Ifemelu, a bright, sharp and observant girl, from her early years in 1990's Nigeria, to a life in America, where after the first rude shocks of culture change in a new world, where `fat' is a bad word and not merely a statement of fact, where colour is such a big issue that it can rule people's lives, and where everything is different, she slowly and surely starts to become an Americanah. In Americanah, ifemelu observes, and we are informed by her observations, she converses and we see her character, and she remembers, and in her memories we see a rich story that begins in Lagos, journeys through the cities of America, and gains a body that is beautiful to savour. It is through Ifemelu's observations, we experience what Americana is about. Hair, specifically Black/African hair. Why do black women hide their hair? Would Beyonce ever allow the world to see her hair the way it really is, or would Michelle Obama? These are the questions Ifemelu asks In her blog, where after having lived in the United States for a long time, she broaches issues of race, hair and life in America from the eyes of a `Non-American Black'. We experience race, Kimberley, the white woman who uses beautiful as a word to describe `black', because for whichever reason, black is a word that should be said as little as possible. Kurt, to whom Ifemelu's race means nothing, and Blaine, the Black American Yale professor, whose influence, in my opinion, would be the biggest in turning Ifemelu's observations from the disinterested and amused observation of a `Non-American Black' or `NAB', who calmly tells Kimberly, "You know, you can just say `black.' Not every black person is beautiful." to those of an `American Black' or `AB', who would say in her blog. "If the "slavery was so long ago" thing comes up, have your white friend say that lots of white folks are still inheriting money that their families made a hundred years ago. So if that legacy lives, why not the legacy of slavery?" The old Ifemelu would have told the descendants of the slaves to `get over it'. We also experience love, Adichie herself describes Americanah as a love story, and this is true. There is love in almost every book, but in Americanah, it is not incidental, it is a central part of the story. Before America, and race and hair became issues, there was Obinze, the love of Ifemelu's teenage life. If Ifemelu, the daughter of a civil servant who lost his job because he would not bow to the excessive respect that Lagos Yoruba's employ and call his boss `Mummy', and uses English in such a way as to provide a hilarious sort of comic relief, is sharp and confident, then Obinze, the only son of a university professor, with his love for American books and his quiet belief in himself, is self assured and mature. They fall in love soon after they meet as secondary school students in Lagos, and when Ifemelu tells her aunt and friend, Uju, about him, saying she has met the love of her life, there is a hilarious moment when Aunt Uju advises her to "let him kiss and touch but not to let him put it inside." While most of the story is seen though Ifemelu's eyes and memories, we also get to see some of Obinze, we follow him to London, where he lives as an illegal immigrant, after failing to find a job in Nigeria, or to fulfill his dream of going to America, (he later visits America, when he becomes rich, and isn't impressed, he lost interest when he realized that he could buy his way in.) He is arrested on the eve of his sham wedding, and repatriated. In all this Obinze never loses a certain `solidity', that he seems to effortlessly possess. In a democratic Nigeria, where a new middle class is rising, and the money that used to be the preserve of the top army generals starts to filter down, Obinze gets lucky in the way that only happens in Nigeria, where there really is too much money, and overnight he is a very rich man. When Ifemelu starts to hunger for home, Obinze, with whom she has lost touch, is already a husband and father. "Meanwhile o, he has serious money now. See what you missed!" her friend, Ranyinudo tells her, on a call from Nigeria. (How Nigerian to say something like that!) The central question becomes, will they get back together? To some, this is a weakness of the story, the descent into the fantasy of a happily ever after for the heroine and hero, but it is not such a bad thing in itself, it makes enjoyable, and hopeful reading. In summary, I loved the story. I loved the familiarity of it, Ifemelu's mother's ridiculous religiousness, her fathers ludicrous use of English, Aunty Uju, Ginika, Kayode, Emenike, who is perhaps one of the more interesting characters, as he strives to shed the life he was born with, to become what he wishes to be, and all the other different kinds of people that make up the rich tapestry that is Nigerian life. Ifemelu is an interesting character, observant, watchful, sure of herself, even as a teenager, she is confident in a way I wouldn't have understood at that age. Obinze, knows himself in such a way that he doesn't need to follow any crowd, or have anybody validate him. However, I did feel that the ending was rather rushed, as if the author had other things to do, and was hastily putting the final scenes together. The main grouse I had with the book was the fact that I saw some elements from Adichie's previous works. When Barrack Obama wins the election and her cousin Dike calls her to say that his president is black like him, I remember an interview long ago where Adichie says that her nephew had said the exact same thing after the elections. It make me feel cheated, this, the similarity of her relationship with Curt to the relationship of the characters in her short story, The Thing Around Your Neck; when Obinze describes his house in Enugu, and I see the house in Birdsong, the scene of another adulterous affair in another of her old short stories. How autobiographical is her work then? I ask myself. I begin to feel suspicious, perhaps all the characters are really her and the people she knows, perhaps Pat Peoples is really Matthew Quick, and Nick Hornby's characters are really just himself? I noticed that apart from Dike, her little cousin, and Obinze, and perhaps Obinze's mother, Ifemelu does not seem very emotionally involved with the people that shape her life, sometimes she seems like a watcher, an observer, and not a character in the story. Also, because this novel is really many observations and opinions, sometimes it does feel contrived, like a character or event has been introduced, solely because they are a means to present an issue Adichie wants to discuss. Lastly, I did not find the blog interesting, unlike the prose of the novel, the writing is not fluid, or vey descriptive, and seems to jump from one issue to another, trying to cram many thoughts into one jumbled package. This may be because I am not an NAB, and those issues mean little to me, perhaps the AB's would read it differently. Regardless, Americanah is a wonderful read, sometimes laugh out loud funny, sometimes sad, but always interesting.

One of the best books I have read this year. It has it all: a great love story, a subtle and poignant analysis on race and culture in the US, a vivid description of modern and old days Nigeria. Definitely a must read for all Africa lovers, but also for all literature lovers.

Her best book so far. Very intelligent and profound. I loved the blogs on race in America. Some slow and less captivating passages, especially scenes in Nigeria towards the end. But overall excellent read on all levels.

Um dos melhores livros que já li! Muito bem escrito, rico em detalhes, estória bem construída. Chimamanda é uma das melhores escritoras da atualidade.

Got Americanah for someone special. It’s a thoughtful and engaging read, and I truly hope they enjoy it.

I really enjoyed this novel, the many situations and characters (I would like to know how auntie Uju and Dike are now please..), and the development of the love story is full of unexpected situations. The author has a sharp sense of observation and is very witty. There are very interesting and funny descriptions of achetypal characters both from the American and Nigerian societies. For example there are descriptions of a Nigerian arivist in London, or American white democrats which are honest and funny. I love the fact that the story is around an African society, which shows more commonality than differences with western society. I was quite surprised by the place that race conciousness takes for black Africans when they reach America. It becomes obsessionnal. Racism takes an overwhelming place when the main character is in America. This bit seems very exagerated, otherwise how would it be possible for black people to live there. It almost seems that black people are permanently concious of an inferiority. It seems wrong. How can people seem obsessed with their race ? To me this aspect was exagerated in the novel, even if the contrast with how she feels in Nigeria (no race issue) is interesting.