Our Ghanaian colleague Ayuba Mamadu was stoked reading Americanah, a novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Ayuba, 30 years old, studied Human Resource Management at the University College of Management Studies in Accra, Ghana. He has been working as project manager with Aminu Initiative for several years and this is what he has to say about Americanah:

“The author is an exceptional woman with a historian background. She is a very good communicator and also an illustrator by high stands. She is precise with her facts while writing and that makes her book understandably good. She is seen as a pace setter for many African ladies. The book Americanah speaks about race and self identity. It is positioned to compare racial hierarchies in the United States and to social striving in her native country.”

AMERICANAH

A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion  - for each other and for their homeland.

Americanah is licensed for publication in 29 languages.

Major Theme

Americanization is one of the biggest themes in Americanah. In the context of the novel, America itself is a symbol of hope, wealth, social and economic mobility, and, ultimately, disappointment, as Ifemelu learns that the American Dream is a lie and that the advantages she enjoys there often come at a great price. Her Americanization is slow but distinct, and she gradually picks up the slang, adapts to her surroundings (for better or worse), and adopts American politics. Her views on gender and race change because of this, and her blog is devoted to exploring the issue of race as a non-American black in America. She’s called Americanah when she returns to Nigeria, having picked up a blunt, American way of speaking and of addressing problems. She resists this label, but it’s obvious to the reader that Ifemelu’s years in America have changed her.

According to Idowu Faith, “no valid statement can be made on Americanah without deconstructing the term “Americanah” which, more or less, reveals the thesis of the narrative as well as the preoccupation of Adichie in the text.” In Nigerian parlance, the term “Americanah” is an identity term that is premised on a person’s previous experience of living in America. In an interview, Adichie defines Americanah as a Nigerian word that can describe any of those who have been to the US and return American affectations; pretend not to understand their mother tongues any longer; refuse to eat Nigerian food or make constant reference to their life in America.

From this understanding, it is clear that Ifemelu’s decision to return home without worrying about being identified as an “Americanah”, establishes the fact that Adichie is proposing and charting a path for a new kind of migration story whose quintessence is return migration.

The Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria.

Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

Ms. Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk We Should All Be Feminists has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014.

Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.

Reviews

Critics praised the novel, especially noting its range across different societies and reflection of global tensions.

Writing for The New York Times, Mike Peed said, “Americanah’ examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience - a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s observations.” Peed concluded, “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.”

Reviewing the novel for The Washington Post, Emily Raboteau called Adichie “a hawkeyed observer of manners and distinctions in class,” and said Adichie brings a “ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both the United States and Nigeria.”

In the Chicago Tribune, Laura Pearson wrote, “Sprawling, ambitious and gorgeously written, ‘Americanah’ covers race, identity, relationships, community, politics, privilege, language, hair, ethnocentrism, migration, intimacy, estrangement, blogging, books and Barack Obama. It covers three continents, spans decades, leaps gracefully, from chapter to chapter, to different cities and other lives…[Adichie] weaves them assuredly into a thoughtfully structured epic. The result is a timeless love story steeped in our times.”

Bibliographic Data

Chimananda Ngozie Adichie (Author)

Americanah

Turtleback Books

S. 806 pages hardcover

ISBN-10: 0606367217

ISBN-13: 978-0606367219

Link: https://www.chimamanda.com/book/americanah/

‍