Americanah
Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 National Book Critics
Circle Fiction award. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian
woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The
novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with
high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May
14, 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf.
A television miniseries, starring and produced by Lupita Nyong'o, is currently
in development, set to debut on HBO Max in 2020.
Summary
As
teenagers in a Lagos
secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Nigeria at the time is under military
dictatorship, and people are seeking to leave
the country. Ifemelu moves to the United States to study, where she struggles
for the first time with racism and the many varieties of racial distinctions:
for the first time, Ifemelu discovers what it means to be a "Black
Person". Obinze, had hoped to join her in the U.S. but he is denied a visa
after 9/11. He goes to London, eventually becoming an undocumented immigrant after his
visa expires.
Years
later, Obinze returns to Nigeria and becomes a wealthy man as a property
developer in the newly democratic country. Ifemelu gains success in the United
States, where she becomes known for her blog about race in America, entitled
"Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly
Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black". When Ifemelu returns to
Nigeria, the two consider reviving a relationship in light of their diverging
experiences and identities during their many years apart.
Characters
- Ifemelu - the protagonist of Americanah. She is born in Lagos, Nigeria, and studies in America.
- Obinze – Raised in Nsukka, Nigeria. His mother, a professor, taught him how to cook and fostered his love of books.
- Obinze's Mother- Obinze's mother is a professor at Nsukka University and a widow. She struggles with outdated Nigerian attitudes towards women.
- Ifemelu's Mother and Father- Ifemelu's mother is a devout evangelical Christian who fasts dangerously in order to drive the Devil out of her family's life. Ifemelu's father is powerless to stop her. He unexpectedly loses his job at a federal agency and is unable to support his family.
- Aunty Uju - Ifemelu's cousin who acts as Ifemelu's older sister. She starts a relationship with the General, which leads to the birth of Dike. After the General dies, Uju moves to America, where she struggles to continues the medical training she began in Nigeria.
- Dike - Dike is Aunty Uju and the General's son, who moves with his mother to the United States. He lives first in New York, then Massachusetts. His suicide attempt devastates his family and underlines the difficulty immigrant families face when trying to integrate into American society.
- The General- The General is Aunty Uju's lover and Dike's father.
- Curt - Ifemelu's first American boyfriend.
- Blaine - Ifemelu's second American boyfriend, an assistant professor at Yale who writes a blog about race and popular culture. Ifemelu moves to New Haven to live with him.
- Shan- Blaine's sister. She is a writer who is often critical of others.
- Kosi - Obinze's wife and the mother of his child.
- Buchi- Obinze and Kosi's daughter.
Themes
Americanization
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.
Gender
Adichie's
explorations of sexual education and the perception of sex among youngsters in
Nigeria plays a fundamental role in the bildungsroman journey of Ifemelu exploring her sexuality as an adolescent
in a puritan post-colonial society.
Migration
While
many of the migratory experiences in the novel work within migration theory,
Adichie simultaneously transcends the borders of international migration
theories by introducing a new factor that both influences migration and
projects a new perspective on return migration. According to Dustmann and Weiss
(2007:237), lack of economic opportunity and escape from natural
disaster/persecution are two main reasons individuals migrate throughout
history. While identifying the need to flee “choicelessness” as the main reason
for much of the migration in the twenty-first century Nigerian setting of the
novel, Adichie uses literary dimensions to shake up the foundations of theory.
Consequently, the direction of this type of migration, how it affects the bonds
of love, how it changes personalities and cultural views, and how it
reinterprets identity become the novelist’s major theoretical engagements. In
addition, Adichie is concerned with how migration debases and elevates, how it barters
and fulfills and, most significantly, how it reinvents.
Reception
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."
Awards
The
book was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. It won the 2013 National Book
Critics Circle Award (Fiction), and was shortlisted for
the 2014 Baileys Women's
Prize for Fiction of the United Kingdom. The Chicago
Tribune awarded Adichie its 2013 Heartland
Award for Fiction, "recogniz[ing Americanah as] a novel that
engages with important ideas about race, and does so with style, wit and
insight."
In
March 2017, Americanah was picked as the winner for the "One Book,
One New York" program, part of a community
reading initiative encouraging all city residents to read the same book.
Sales
Americanah spent 78 weeks on NPR's Paperback Best-Seller list. Days after The New York
Times named Americanah to its best books of 2013 list, Beyoncé also signaled her admiration of Adichie, sampling Adichie's
TED
Talk "We should all be
feminists" on the song "***Flawless";
sales of Americanah soared and as of December 23, 2013, the book climbed
to the number 179 spot on Amazon.com's list of its 10,000 best-selling books.
Adaptations
In
2014, it was announced that David
Oyelowo and Lupita
Nyong'o would star in a film adaptation of
the novel, to be produced by Brad
Pitt and his production company Plan B.
In 2018, Nyong'o told The Hollywood Reporter that she was developing a television miniseries based on
the book, which she would produce and star in. It was announced on September
13, 2019, that HBO Max
would air the miniseries in ten episodes.
References
· · Stefanie Anna
Reuter: "Becoming
a Subject: Developing a Critical Consciousness and Coming to Voice in
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah", in: Anja Oed (Hg.): Reviewing the Past, Negotiating the
Future: The African Bildungsroman (forthcoming).
· · Navaratnam,
Subashini (9 August 2013). "Race-in-America
Is a Central Character in 'Americanah'". PopMatters.
· · Peed, Mike (June
7, 2013). "Realities
of Race 'Americanah,' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie". The New York Times.
· · Raboteau, Emily
(10 June 2013). "Book
review: 'Americanah' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
·
Pearson, Laura (June 28, 2013). "Review: 'Americanah' by Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie".
The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
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