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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah Hardcover – 11 April 2013

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Author)

4.4 45,149 ratings

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

‘A delicious, important novel’ The Times

‘Alert, alive and gripping’ Independent

‘Some novels tell a great story and others make you change the way you look at the world. Americanah does both.’ Guardian

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze 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.

Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?

Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning ‘Americanah’ is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalized world.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fourth Estate
Publication date

11 April 2013
Dimensions

15.8 x 4.7 x 23.6 cm
ISBN-10

0007306229
ISBN-13

978-0007306220
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She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.
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There was something in him, lighter than ego but darker than insecurity, that needed constant buffing, polishing, waxing.
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How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted? Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been.
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Product description

Review

‘A brilliant novel: epic in scope, personal in resonance and with lots to say’ Elizabeth Day, Observer

‘A delicious, important novel from a writer with a great deal to say’ The Times

‘A brilliant exploration of being African in America … an urgent and important book, further evidence that its author is a real talent’ Sunday Telegraph

‘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’ Alex Clark, Guardian

‘A tour de force … The artistry with which Adichie keeps her story moving, while animating the complex anxieties in which the characters live and work, is hugely impressive’ Mail on Sunday

‘Adichie is terrific on human interactions … Adichie’s writing always has an elegant shimmer to it … Wise, entertaining and unendingly perceptive’ Independent on Sunday

‘Adichie paints on a grand canvas, boldly and confidently … This is a very funny, very warm and moving intergenerational epic that confirms Adiche’s virtuosity, boundless empathy and searing social acuity’ Dave Eggers

‘“An honest novel about race” … with guts and lustre … within the context of a well-crafted, compassionate, visceral and delicately funny tale of lasting high-school love and the sorrows and adventures of immigration’ Diana Evans, The Times

‘[A] long, satisfying novel of cross-continental relationships, exile and the pull of home … Adichie’s first novel for seven years and well worth the wait’ FT

‘Alert, alive and gripping’ Independent

About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. Her first novel ‘Purple Hibiscus’ was published in 2003 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her second novel ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her short story collection, ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, was published to critical acclaim in 2009. Her work has been selected by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC Short Story Awards, has appeared in various literary publications, including Zoetrope and The Iowa Review. She won a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2009, and in 2010 appeared on the New Yorker’s list of the best 20 writers under 40. Her third novel, ‘Americanah’, was published to widespread critical acclaim in 2013. She lives in Nigeria.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate (11 April 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007306229
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007306220
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.8 x 4.7 x 23.6 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 818,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 3,857 in Political Fiction (Books)
- 7,858 in Women's Literary Fiction (Books)
- 72,222 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.4 45,149 ratings

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker and Granta. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize; Americanah, which won the NBCC Award and was a New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essay We Should All Be Feminists. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

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Abstract

Tour de force

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 August 2023

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What I admired most about this book was the author's ability to describe the tiny, subtle, fleeting things in life that we barely register at the time but which we utterly recognise when they are described back to us. I loved this book. I did flag in the middle when it felt like I was being repeatedly thwacked over the head with race content, but I loved the book anyway. What a writer.

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Ralph Blumenau

Nigerians in Nigeria, America and England

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 July 2014

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WARNING: "WAY TOO MANY SPOILERS" SAYS ONE READER OF THIS REVIEW.

The novel is set in the period of roughly the forty years after the 1970s. In the first two chapters we see Ifemelu, having lived in the United States for fifteen years and with a fellowship at Princeton, feeling the need to go back to her native Nigeria. She has a black American lover, but is looking forward to meeting her former boy friend, Obinze, although he is now married and has a little daughter. For his part Obinze, now prosperous as the result of having ingratiated himself obsequiously with a powerful local wheeler-dealer, feels a little thrill when he receives her email announcing that she is about to return.

The novel then flashes back to the time when they were both still at school, and later at Nsukka University, and in love with each other. America was then a magnet for many of those young people, and they envy the Nigerians who have been there or even settled there. Part of it was an idolization of American (generally popular) culture, part to get an education abroad which was not constantly interrupted by prolonged teachers' strikes, part a wish to escape from a Nigeria under a military dictatorship and in which corruption is rife. For example, Ifemelu's aunt Uju, who was almost a mother to her, was the kept woman of a boorish old general who kept her in luxury in a magnificent house. She loses all that in an instant when the General dies, leaving her with Dike, their one-year-old baby son. She somehow managed to get to America with Dike and did menial jobs while studying medicine. Five years later Ifemelu followed her, having got a university scholarship and a visa. Obinze planned to go there, too, once he had graduated, for post-graduate study.

There are excellent descriptions of the sheer unfamiliarity of American life when Ifemelu arrives to stay with Aunt Uju in Brooklyn until term started in Philadelphia; also of what five years in America had done to change Aunt Uju. Ifemelu had enrolled in Philadelphia because an old friend Ginika was already there: Ginika and her friends had also become thoroughly Americanized. In due course Ifemelu will acculturate, too; but she becomes increasingly aware of racial issues in America, not only between whites - even well-meaning ones - and blacks, but also between WASPs and Jews, and between African Americans (the descendants of slaves) and American Africans (Africans who have recently arrived in America). Much later she will write a blog for her "Fellow non-American Blacks", describing incidents illustrating racial issues. Every now and again the blogs appear in the novel (though I think that, unlike the rest of the novel, they are not all that well written).

Ifemulu had to work as well as study; but she was turned down for a job innumerable times. In a deep depression she neither wrote nor phoned Obinze, deleted his emails and did not read the letter he sent. Then at last she found a job as a baby-sitter for a liberal white family (its dynamics very well described), and had what initially appeared an unselfconscious love affaire with Curt, a member of that family. He lived in Baltimore and, after she had graduated, he helped her to get a job with a public relations firm in that city. For the interview she had her braids "relaxed": hair styles as a way of projecting identity play an very important role in this novel, and Ifemulu will have it re-braided when she decides to return to Nigeria.

In Baltimore she learnt from an old schoolfriend that Obinze was now in London, and the novel now switches to telling his story (which, in my opinion, lacks the depth and subtlety of Ifemulu's).

When Obinze had applied for an American visa after graduating, his application had been refused without any explanation. But he was so keen to get out of Nigeria that he then got a six-months visa for England, purportedly as a research assistant, though he had no such job. He did various menial jobs in London instead. When the visa expired, he stayed on as an illegal immigrant, hoping to find a British woman to marry, which would give him the right to stay in England. But the immigration authorities discovered that he has outstayed his visa and deported him back to Nigeria.

Meanwhile Ifemulu's relationship with Curt turned out after all not to be all that unselfconscious as far as she was concerned, and she brought it to an end. It was now that she started her blog, and this soon went viral, received responsive as well as abusive comments, earned her invitations to speak on multiculturalism and diversity, and brought in a lot of money. The blog was admired by Blaine, a black American academic, and very soon she moved in with him. The stage is set for an examination of the difference between African Americans like him and American Africans like her. The novel becomes increasingly obsessional about race - conversations become mostly about it; the blogs appear more frequently. And Blaine fell out with her because she fails to turn up at a demonstration he had organized in support of a badly-treated African American, and their relationship lost its warmth.

When she returned to Nigeria, she noticed how the country had changed in the last fifteen years, but also how much she had changed and how some Nigerian behaviour now jarred on her. Returnees from abroad are a special group, envied and condescending, and they have their own club, the Nigerpolitan. After a while she started a new blog about the Lagos scene as she perceived it.

It took her some months before she finally contacted Obinze, and the last part of the novel shows, as might be expected, the relationship between them going through several complicated phases; but I must not reveal them.

The book is a trifle long, with perhaps rather too many characters and with some scenes that might well have been cut. Also, although I fully appreciate how important racial issues are and am in sympathy with what Adichie writes, I found the very lengthy treatment of them in the American part of the book a little wearisome, a tract rather than a novel, and telling me little that I was not aware of. As in her earlier novels "Purple Hibiscus" and "Half of a Yellow Sun" (see my Amazon reviews) she gives a vivid account of the Nigerian scene, and on the whole I found the chapters set in Nigeria a good deal more involving than those set in London or the United States. Ifemelu throughout and Obinze in the Nigerian chapters are memorable and complex characters.

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MUN13

Sable, caramel or hues of blue-black ?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 April 2013

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What is the difference between an African-American and an American-African? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new novel Americanah gives you much fodder for thought if you have never stopped to think about such detailed distinctions on your own.
Although the book tells the story about the love and lives of its two central characters Ifemelu and Obinze, Americanah is essentially a book about race, the way race is perceived and the way it exists in today's modern and globalised world.
Ifemelu and Obinze meet in high school and fall head over heels in love. They come from very different backgrounds. Ifemelu's father is a former civil servant out of work and her mother is a middle class woman blinded by her prejudicial faith in God and His miracles. She encompasses everything that happens around her in the light of the lord, creating explanations that only serve her deep faith, without much touch with reality.
This is modern day Nigeria in the eighties where the military reign seeps into everyday life and Ifemelu's mother changes her church to one which is supported by the generals. When her husband's distant cousin Uju (who has come from a small village to live with them in Lagos) decides to become the kept woman of a married, much older general, Ifemelu's mother terms it a 'miracle of God'.
Here Ifemelu grows up, with a general distrust for the obvious. Right in the beginning of the story, Adichie makes it clear that Ifemelu and Obinze are not easily bought into the conventional. They ask, prod and try to find their own ways to deal with things around them.
When the general is killed, Aunt Uju manages to cross continents to make her way to the USA with the general's illegitimate son. Ifemelu too finds herself in the USA soon thereafter, winning a scholarship for higher studies. The harrowing experiences that follow are the making of Ifemelu. All her experience or idea about the land of opportunities is from such glossy TV shows as the Cosby Show. Facing a reality that is nothing like the obscure shiny images in her mind, Ifemelu eventually lands on her feet, but not before she manages to destroy her now long distance relationship with Obinze.
Ifemelu's self-consciousness and awkwardness turn into pride; she also finds herself distancing herself from her own kind who she feels are too desperate to blend in, like her Aunt Uju. Someone who once appeared full of practicality and wisdom and smartness now stinks of desperation. Uju herself faces the harsh reality of earning a livelihood instead of being kept by someone.
Adichie very eloquently describes this falling out between Ifemelu and her once mentor as Uju tries to blend into being a American. Ifemelu finds a long term relationship with a white boy and discovers the depths of patronising from others on issues of race and colour. White American women, almost clueless about how to deal with a dark skinned girl, call her a 'beautiful woman', in tones that actually mean 'ordinary-looking black woman.'
Adichie weaves this racial awakening of Ifemelu through a subtle input of events that expose the protagonist to her own identity. Adichie's characters are not all black, they are more multi coloured so to speak. They are in fact 'sable' or 'gingerbread' or 'caramel'. At one point Adichie describes one coloured woman as someone with 'skin so dark it has an undertone of blueberries.'
Ifemelu deals with her increasing frustrations through her blog titled "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black". She eventually wins a fellowship at Princeton, something Adichie herself won. The writer has said that many of Ifemelu's experiences are her own.
Meanwhile, Obinze finds himself in the UK but ends up as an illegal immigrant. His experiences are really a world away from Ifemelu's more sophisticated problems with finding respect. Obinze is just looking for a day he can feel 'free' as he walks down the streets of London or Essex, cleaning toilets and putting up with crude racial encounters as he tries to make it on his own.
Chimamanda Adichie is a wonderful observer of human nature, of qualities and the finer, grainier, subtle things that become the reasons for a person to become who he becomes. She captures human interactions superbly in this book. Ifemelu's extended visit to a New Jersey hair salon, where each hairdresser is justifiably 'correct' in the way she sees America as opposed to Ifemelu's own, is one of the first and most captivating such scenes in Americanah. African hair itself represents a political statement as the writer has said in most of her interviews. Promoting this book takes up some space in explaining how deep the roots of racial treatment has seeped into people's cultures.
Ifemelu feels free after she stops hiding her Nigerian accent under an American one. She refuses to straighten her hair even when African-Americans ask her, 'You ever wonder why he likes you looking all jungle like that?" on observing her long term relationship with a white man.
Perhaps it is this dignity and pride in her own ethnicity which is also her authenticity that allows Ifemelu to survive. Obinze struggles and fails and is shortly deported back to Lagos.
Eventually, though, Obinze thrives in his own country, gets married to a high aspiring woman and again gets caught up between the values of wanting to be 'his own' or a 'wanna-be'. Ifemelu also returns to Nigeria and the rest of the novel very predictably returns to the unfinished love story between the two main protagonists. However, here too it is the writer's strong story telling capability that shows the reader the world that Nigeria is; the reason why Ifemelu or Obinze are who they are. The proud, home grown generation has no time for such nonsense as 'Americanahs' who seem to be returning home to just belittle and deride their own kind.
Americanah is not just a simple novel. It deals with issues. It is a story of the new world, where immigrants are of a new kind. Ifemelu or Obinze are not the old world sixties' or seventies' immigrants; they are smart, capable, intelligent and educated middle class protagonists, who are forced to emigrate not because of ambition, or conflict or poverty but by "the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness".
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2006 Orange Prize winner Half of a Yellow Sun was a complex book about the experiences of Igbo civilians during the Biafran war. The story was about history and politics and people. In Americanah, Adichie subtly tones her writing down one notch to deal with something that is far more complex than a war and history - she deals with identity and race in the modern age while explaining the present day socio-cultural and political background that makes people who they are.
However sudden or rushed, the ending of the novel feels as if it is emphatic, rich, real, perceptive and of course, hugely entertaining.

6 people found this helpful

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Americanah Hardcover – 11 April 2013

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

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