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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- Author of 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.

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 departs for the United States to study. Through her experiences in relationships and studies, she struggles with the experience of racism in American culture, and the many varieties of racial distinctions. Upon coming to America, Ifemelu discovered for the first time what it means to be a "Black Person". Obinze, son of a professor, had hoped to join her in the US 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 the viability of reviving a relationship in light of their diverging experiences during their many years apart.

Characters

• Ifemelu - the protagonist of Americanah. She is born in Lagos, Nigeria. In her early years, Ifemelu observes her mother join an fanatical evangelical church and begin an unhealthy habit of fasting, while her father abruptly loses his job and struggles to support his family financially. Ifemelu excels in school, where she meets Obinze. Ifemelu commits to Obinze as a young woman, but after she emigrates to America finds herself unprepared for a long distance relationship. Upon arriving in America she falls into a deep depression, but eventually she begins to acclimatise. In America she is forced to identify as a non-American black and to contend with everyday racism. While in college, Ifemelu works as a nanny, and meets Curt. Though wary of his wealth and connections, she allows him to set up a job interview for her at a public relations firm in Baltimore. They move in together but eventually separate. Ifemelu begins a relationship with Blaine, an African American professor, but grows dissatisfied with their relationship, and returns to Nigeria, where she reconnects with Obinze.
• Obinze – Raised in Nsukka, Nigeria. His mother, a professor, taught him how to cook and fostered his love of books. His upbringing opens many doors for him, and his refined beliefs and mannerisms attract Ifemelu to him. He is unable to obtain a visa for America and goes instead to Great Britain, where he lives as an illegal immigrant. Eventually Obinze is detained by the UK Government and deported. This experience shames him, but he is able to build a successful business in Lagos and marries.
• 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 passes, Uju moves to America, where she struggles to continues the medical training she began in Nigeria. After passing her exams, she moves to Massachusetts and marries an accountant from Nigeria. Unhappy with her life, she leaves the accountant, and moves to a different neighbor, continuing to raise Dike by herself.
• Dike - Dike is Aunty Uju and the General's son. After the General passes, he 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. Curt is extremely wealthy and uses his family's business connections to secure Ifemelu a job interview in an effort to impress her, and to persuade her to move to Baltimore so he can see her more often. Curt is kind and supportive but ultimately unfulfilling for Ifemelu.
• 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. His rigidness creates problems in his relationship with Ifemelu.
• 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

Americanah focuses on the changes that Ifemelu experiences as she becomes Americanized after living in America for so long. As a Nigerian, she sees firsthand the true life experiences that take place living in the land which Nigerians view as 'heaven on earth'. According to an article by BBC News, "To many Nigerians, America is the Promised Land. A land where clear waters gush and trees flourish with fresh dollar notes, where bees lose their sting and pigs fly. A land where lame feet are cured and blind eyes are opened, where African accents shed their dense tones and become shrill nasal emissions filled with "R"s and "wanna" and "gonna"."

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.

Adichie does an excellent job in telling the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian-American who struggles with being both of the cultural identities that she has now been expected to adopt. The style of writing Adichie uses creates a sense of connection and the erasure of isolation for the Nigerian-American reader because Ifemelu becomes someone that he/she can relate to shares the same feelings and this concept brings out the aspect of reality in Adichie's book. Serena Guarracino writes in her blog article, "With its interweaving of creative writing and opinion making, novel and blog, Americanah comments on the public role of the writer and its viral exposure, offering a poignant example of the mutation of narrative forms in the information age."

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

Americanah- written about a Nigerian-American experience

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."

Adichie's "Americanah," similar to Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" exemplifies a contrast between African and American literature. Ifemelu's life in Nigeria and America is shown to us through Adichie's use of flashback is an excellent way of showing the differences of Ifemelu and Obinze's life. In The Guardian, Elizabeth Day writes, "...Adichie really begins to flex her muscles as a novelist: the sense of dislocation felt by both characters in two countries with wholly different histories and class structures is expertly rendered. She has an extraordinary eye for the telling nuance of social interaction within a particular kind of liberal elite."

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

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