Americanah
Americanah is a 2013 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her third novel and fourth book, it was published on 14 May 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. The novel recounts the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who emigrates to the United States to attend a university. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2013.
The novel was the story of a young Nigerian woman and her male schoolmate, who had not studied the trans-Atlantic slave trade in school and had no understanding of the racism associated with being Black in the United States or class structures in the United Kingdom. It explores the central message of a "shared Black consciousness", as both of the characters – one in Britain and the other in America – experience a loss of identity when they try to navigate their lives abroad. A commercial success upon publication, French media company France 24's 2015 report shows Americanah has sold more than 500,000 copies in the US and has been translated into 25 languages.
Background
Adichie, in her 2009 TED talk entitled "The Danger of a Single Story" argued for the understanding of the multiplicity of African experiences. With her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun, Vogue classified her as the first in a series of young African authors writing about their countries with Western audiences in mind. Adichie started writing fiction at Johns Hopkins University and later got a master's in African studies at Yale University.Adichie said that when she was growing up, "everyone wanted to go to America. But I never wanted to until I realised it would be a way of escaping becoming a doctor", hence, after a year of studying medicine, she dropped out and left Nigeria to the US at 19 years-old to live with her sister in Brooklyn, and then to Philadelphia, where she studied. It took Adichie four years to write the novel. The title "Americanah" is a Lagosian slang for "Nigerians newly returned after a spell Stateside ranging from dissects, satirises, and, at its most potent, simply describes the immigrant experience, the myriad forms of racism, how race is viewed and experienced differently in America and Britain, and how we have to leave a place to belong to it".
The novel was published in French by Gallimard in 2015.
Plot summary
Two Nigerian teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fell in love in their school days at Lagos. The country is ruled by the military and people seek to exit the country. Ifemelu moves to the United States to study, however she begins seeing another view of her from the people. Such views includes racism and for the first time, she begins understanding being black. Obinze, on his side hopes that he would join her but his visa gets denied following the September 11 attack in the US. He eventually moves to London and becomes an undocumented immigrant after his visa expires.After many years, Obinze returns to Nigeria. He has become wealthy since he works as a property developer. Ifemelu gains attention in the United States following her blog about race. The blog is named "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks by a Non-American Black". When she returns to Nigeria, the two consider reviving a relationship in light of their diverging experiences and identities during their many years apart.
Characters
- Ifemelu– Nigerian teenager who moved from Nigeria to US to study
- Obinze– Nigerian teenager and Ifemelu's high school lover
- Obinze's mother– Professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka University and a widow
- Aunty Uju– Ifemelu's father's cousin who acts as Ifemelu's elder sister. She is also Dike's mother
- Dike– Son of Aunty Uju and The General, born in the US
- The General– Aunty Uju's lover and Dike's father
- Curt– Ifemelu's first American boyfriend
- Blaine– Ifemelu's second American boyfriend and Professor at Yale University
- Shan– Writer and Blaine's sister
- Kosi– Obinze's wife
- Buchi– Daughter of Obinze and Kosi
- Ginika– Ifemelu's friend
Reception
Critical reviews
In her review for San Francisco Chronicle, Catherine Chung wrote, "Americanah is an exhilarating, mind-expanding pleasure of a read. It is a brilliant treatise on race, class and globalization, and also a deep, clear-eyed story about love — and how it can both demand and make possible the struggle to become our most authentic selves". Kristy Davis of Oprah Daily wrote that the novel is "an expansive, epic love story. It pulls no punches with regard to race, class and the high-risk, heart-tearing struggle for belonging in a fractured world", while NPR wrote that "Adichie weaves whole entries into the narrative, and these tart editorials add yet another dimension to Americanah, which is as capacious, absorbing and original a novel as you will read this year". Eugenia Williamson of The Boston Globe wrote, "a cerebral and utterly transfixing epic...Americanah is superlative at making clear just how isolating it can be to live far away from home". Mike Peed of The New York Times Book Review wrote that it is "a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us...A steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience".In her review for The Washington Post, Emily Raboteau praised the author, writing that "Adichie is uniquely positioned to compare racial hierarchies in the United States to social striving in her native Nigeria. She does so in this new work with a ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both nations". The Dallas Morning News called the novel "a bright, bold book with unforgettable swagger that proves it sometimes takes a newcomer to show Americans to ourselves". John Timpane of The Philadelphia Inquirer acknowledged that "Americanah tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk", while Vogue and The Seattle Times wrote that "Americanah is that rare thing in contemporary literary fiction: a lush, big-hearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique" and "a near-flawless novel", respectively.
In a review for 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".
Awards and nominations
Americanah won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014. It won the 2013 Heartland Award for Fiction by The Chicago Tribune.It was rated in 2013 as "one of the Best Books of the Year" by The New York Times, NPR, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Newsday. The novel was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by New York Times Book Review. In March 2017, Americanah won the "One Book, One New York" program by One City One Book. In 2024, it was ranked #27 in the list of 100 best books of the 21st century by The New York Times.