Book Review: AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

For: 500 Words magazine

Nigeria’s renowned storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel, AMERICANAH is not merely a story about Nigerians faced with difficult decisions during the country’s military dictatorship. AMERICANAH is a classical African novel in the universality and contemporary relevance of its themes: the migration of the middle class, the quest for love; and the continuous unraveling and discovery of identity.

The story of the flight of Africa’s brightest minds is one that continues to drain the continent. Yet we don’t hear often enough from Africans themselves about the challenges of migration (or immigration) of the middle class that is fleeing in the thousands because of: economic hardship, poor educational opportunities, staggering unemployment (that is leaving the youth idle and frustrated); and the pursuit for a better life.

Integration and economic stability in the idealized West are often not the easy breeze we imagine them to be. And AMERICANAH excels at telling that part of the often untold struggles of immigration, which challenge the humanity of the novel’s main characters at an existential and psychological level.

In this novel, the story follows the diverging paths of Ifemelu and Obinze (the son of a university professor); who were in secondary school when they met, fell in love and attended the same university in Nigeria. The frequent strikes by professors and long-term closure of the their university during the turbulent military dictatorship led Ifemelu to seek better education in America, leaving Obinze behind with a solid plan that he will follow her.

But their “plan” never sees the light. Obinze’s multiple trials for an American visa after 9/11 lead to rejections. It will be almost 15 years before they see eachother again in Nigeria. Permanently changed by the their perspective experiences, but more certain of what they want in life.

After a tough initiation into American life and culture (including sleeping on a mattress on the floor on her first night in America, and battling with unemployment and depression) Ifemelu seems to have it all. She anonymously authors a successful and witty blog on the issue of race in America, has a fellowship at Princeton University and is in a steady relationship. Yet suddenly she has an unexplainable urge to drop it all and go “back home to Nigeria”, amidst the surprise and sometimes shock of friends, relatives and even strangers. Ifemelu is certain in her decision to leave America yet unclear about the reasons that pull her back to her country of origin. Below she contemplates her decision:

“She had ended a relationship in which she was not unhappy, closed a blog she enjoyed, and now she was chasing something she could not articulate clearly, even to herself.”

Obinze, who always idealized America, eventually gets to the United Kingdom, only to live illegally, with a borrowed identity of another Nigerian who allows him to use his name and national identification in return for more than a quarter of his salary. All this for menial jobs that rob Obinze of his dignity and make him live in constant fear of being discovered. He saves every penny to afford a fake marriage, to a citizen of the European Union, which he hopes will grant him his eventual freedom--a legal status and a proper job.

Although the UK has a lot of Nigerians including some of Obinze’s ex-classmates from Nigeria and a first cousin, yet his experience is that of utter loneliness and alienation. Here are his thoughts as he rides a train:

“Later on the train to Essex, he noticed that all the people around him were Nigerians, loud conversations in Yoruba and Pidgin filled the carriage, and for a moment he saw the unfettered non-white foreignness of this scene through the suspicious eyes of the white woman on the tube....and he thought of his mother and Ifemelu, and the life he had imagined for himself, and the life he had now, lacquered as it was by work and reading, by panic and hope. He had never felt so lonely.”

The novel is funny and sad, light and heavy with a diverse set of characters (the single mother, the blogger, the hairdresser, the illegal laborer). However, in this diversity we see African characters, in the diaspora, connected by a common destiny and similar hopes--to survive, to succeed, to belong, and to feel settled.

AMERICANAH will therefore strike a chord with a wide range of readers because it defines the psyche of multiple generations from the African continent (and the Global South), including those who left, those who stayed and those who returned after long years abroad.