Book Review: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I would attempt an answer to the classic ‘what is it about?’ in summing up Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, but I remember how much the very question irks the heroine of the novel.

This is the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, high school sweethearts finding ecstatic joy in their bond until strikes and frustrations in the Nigerian system separates them. Each will go on to a life overseas that is winding and revelatory. By the time we meet her in the story, Ifemelu has already ‘made it’ in America. She’s a fellow at Princeton. A well-paid sharp-tongued blogger looking at race and identity in America from the perspective of a non-American black. Romantically partnered up with a black American Yale professor, Blaine, whose elite group of friends incite variously interesting views on being black in America.

Intelligent and self-aware, our heroine is often funny in her blunt, unapologetic views which she feels the world is entitled to, however unsolicited. Her blog provides the novel’s most insightful discussions on race and ethnicity in America.

Obinze, for his part, has become a big deal in today’s Nigeria. He is locked in a marriage that isn’t unpleasant, but one which gives the impression of a dying ember someone else valiantly keeps fanning. He, too, has a story from his short-lived experience in the UK. His was a life mired in menial jobs and spurts of the fear and panic that accompanies an illegal existence, until eventual arrest and deportation.

They will reunite years later in a new Nigeria, the home that has become the strange familiar, and reignite lost passion in a time that will test and re-test their morals and commitment.

Though at its base a love story, Americanah is an exploration of race, identity and belonging. It is by turns derisive, incisive and educative; a novel with fluid movements between the complex and the simple, unafraid to laugh at and examine its characters with a searing honesty that makes them believable.

There is a seamless movement between time and space that allows the story to unfold without throwing the reader into a haze of geographical confusion. Adichie paints a vivid picture of the disorientating alienation and struggles of the immigrant hustle. Ifemelu, after countless job interviews and zero offers, is pushed into a sordid sexual act with a stranger. Obinze is thrown into an underworld of toilet cleaning, counterfeit documents and a frenzied almost marriage for ‘papers’ which catastrophically backfires.

Less harrowing, but no less a pertinent topic, is the subject of the African woman and her hair. This is a concurrent theme throughout the novel. Ifemelu’s angle of the story is mostly told in flashback sequences while she has her hair braided at a salon in Trenton. The Malian and Senegalese women who work in the salon, can feel no kinship with this their fellow African who is way above them with her education and her airs. Yet, over the course of the time she is there, Ifemelu comes close to a shared bond with Mariama who excitedly tells her she is dating an Igbo man.

Adichie observes the proliferation of weaves and various synthetic styles African women wear with a comedic eye. Indeed, the description of the thumping smacks on an itchy scalp through a weave will resonate with many women, as will the more recent trend towards ‘going natural’. There is enough fodder for conversations on ‘the hair is political’ raised in the novel.

Americanah is witty and readable, but too overwhelmingly skewered toward the (mis)adventures of Ifemelu and Obinze to the detriment of story lines it could have explored with other memorable characters. Nevertheless, it holds your attention till the end without causing loss of interest in between. Thriving on rich dialogues navigating contemporary cultures in Nigeria, America and England, it captures the journey of losing and rediscovering self. I just couldn’t put it down once I started.

It is well worth a read – and then a second. In fact, it’s one I have re-read many times since it was first published that as recently as two weeks ago, it was still one of my recommended reads for a Lithuanian friend who was interested in contemporary African novels. Safe to say it remains one of my favourites.

Have you read Americanah? What are your thoughts on it?