Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) is a beautiful novel about two Nigerian kids who fall in love but whom life separates as young adults. Adichie’s novel follows the young adult lives of Ifemelu and Obinze, as they grow up in Nigeria, study at Nigerian university and ultimately find ways to leave Nigeria in the hope of making a better life. Their love story, coupled with their individual experiences maneuvering new cultures and countries, make this novel compelling and illuminating. Its themes are at once fundamentally human while also specific to the challenges of the modern world. Ifemelu’s path leads her to the US on a student visa while Obinze finds himself, years later, living illegally in the UK; thus, Adichie’s novel examines the many routes Nigerian young people took in the 1990s as they attempted to improve their lives away from the instability of our country’s government, and the emotional costs of those decisions.
The bulk of this novel focuses on Adichie’s fierce protragonist, Ifemelu. Ifemelu’s experiences create an additional layer to the novel as Americanah becomes a book about race in America upon her arrival in the US as an international student. In fact, it is as much a coming-of-age narrative and love story as it is an expose on what it is to live in the US as a non-American black. Through Ifemelu’s life in American (as well as those of her aunt and cousin), Adichie’s novel investigates very directly the concept of race in the US. Ifem becomes a successful race blogger as she finds herself in the unique position of non-American black: someone who feels the snub of racism without having inherited generations of racist culture. Prior to her move to the US, Ifemelu realizes she had never considered race much; but she quickly finds that race is wildly important amidst the American cultural landscape. As Ifemelu’s blog entries demonstrate, race in America is both subtle and divisive, and I found this element of Adichie’s book both provocative and important. The cultural criticism embedded within Americanah provides its reader added levels of meaning. Not only do Adichie’s characters draw the reader into the conflicts and achievements of their personal lives, but in the character of Ifemelu, Adichie’s “Americanah” (an Americanized African) provides lengthy, thought-provoking analysis on American culture at large.
Adichie’s characters in Americanah are vibrant and varied. While the lives and love of Ifemelu and Obinze comprise much of the novel’s narrative plot, Adichie skillfully develops other characters who provide further perspectives on both Nigeria and the US. Americanah includes characters who flee Nigeria for good to struggle and eventually make it, those who leave and return, and those who never leave. The older generations foil the younger ones. Likewise, in America and England, Ifemelu and Obinze both meet a wide range of characters, some who exploit them, others who care for them. Ultimately both Ifemelu and Obinze find their way home to Nigeria ready to make their lives their own.
By the novel’s conclusion, I questioned who was responsible for the consequences of Ifemelu and Obinze’s youthful separation and ultimate reunion. For after many years, their reunion is complicated by other factors which left me, as reader, at odds as I routed for their love. The obligations, experiences and distance between them all seem, to an extent, to be the result of their homeland’s instability during their young adult lives. Thus, Americanah, explores not only the cultural baggage of Ifemelu’s temporary home in the US, but of her homeland in Nigeria, while setting that examination in the most intimate of terms. Amidst all the difficult themes and moments the reader witnesses in Americanah, Adichie’s eloquent prose illuminate the challenges facing her native Nigeria through a very human story, a love story, that I believe we all should read.
Bibliography:
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Anchor Books: New York, 2013.
