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Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
No exaggerating: this was the best book I've read in YEARS! Amazing on so many levels. I often derive greater connection, meaning, and understanding from fiction than nonfiction, and this novel, with its relatable, flawed characters taking all-too-real journeys, struck every chord that I needed to hear.
As a voluntary immigrant and expat, I derived a lot of amusement from the sections where Ifemelu moves to the United States. Those feelings of otherness so perfectly encapsulated by this passage: "She had the sudden sensation of fogginess, of a milky web through which she tried to claw. Her autumn of half blindness had begun, the autumn of puzzlements, of experiences she had knowing there were slippery layers of meaning that eluded her."
But as a white person born in the United States, I value even more the author's incisive depictions and unflinching portrayals of the structure of systemic racism in my home country. The clueless vapidity of some of the privileged characters unnerved me because they were real — actually, often gentler than what I grew up around in rural Tennessee.
The author delivers a polemic on race, class, and gender. She deftly peels back layer after layer of the hierarchy of social structures that affect everyday life for all but those who exist at the so-called top echelon. How race affects the lens of your eyes at a hair salon, a train station, a job interview... in a lover's bed. How it is so, so, so much more than black-and-white.
In a world fraught with racial tension, it's nigh impossible to have a frank conversation with friends, family, or colleagues about race in "post-racial" times, but this book nails it. A character in the book says, “You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country… have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious.”
Adichie chooses neither path, and what we have is a brilliant, character-driven novel with characters I desperately cared about. Though I learned much, I never felt preached at. Instead I followed Ifemelu through her life, picking up the jewels of knowledge that she left strewn in her path and marveling at their beauty and perfect pitch.
Blaine, Ifemelu's liberal academic American black boyfriend in the second half of the book, was particularly interesting to me. His inflexible certainty of what was good and right was often misplaced and unhelpful even though he was on the "right side" of things. I know that for some people, I am a Blaine. Interestingly, though, other people feel like that to me, people I know I should agree with but whose sense of right and wrong is laser-focused on the wrong things — and uninterested in hearing alternate viewpoints. I feel that same sense of stifled-ness and eye-rolling exasperation that Ifemelu feels about Blaine, but I know I make a different subset of my own acquaintances feel that way too.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone — most particularly, my white American friends.
As a voluntary immigrant and expat, I derived a lot of amusement from the sections where Ifemelu moves to the United States. Those feelings of otherness so perfectly encapsulated by this passage: "She had the sudden sensation of fogginess, of a milky web through which she tried to claw. Her autumn of half blindness had begun, the autumn of puzzlements, of experiences she had knowing there were slippery layers of meaning that eluded her."
But as a white person born in the United States, I value even more the author's incisive depictions and unflinching portrayals of the structure of systemic racism in my home country. The clueless vapidity of some of the privileged characters unnerved me because they were real — actually, often gentler than what I grew up around in rural Tennessee.
The author delivers a polemic on race, class, and gender. She deftly peels back layer after layer of the hierarchy of social structures that affect everyday life for all but those who exist at the so-called top echelon. How race affects the lens of your eyes at a hair salon, a train station, a job interview... in a lover's bed. How it is so, so, so much more than black-and-white.
In a world fraught with racial tension, it's nigh impossible to have a frank conversation with friends, family, or colleagues about race in "post-racial" times, but this book nails it. A character in the book says, “You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country… have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious.”
Adichie chooses neither path, and what we have is a brilliant, character-driven novel with characters I desperately cared about. Though I learned much, I never felt preached at. Instead I followed Ifemelu through her life, picking up the jewels of knowledge that she left strewn in her path and marveling at their beauty and perfect pitch.
Blaine, Ifemelu's liberal academic American black boyfriend in the second half of the book, was particularly interesting to me. His inflexible certainty of what was good and right was often misplaced and unhelpful even though he was on the "right side" of things. I know that for some people, I am a Blaine. Interestingly, though, other people feel like that to me, people I know I should agree with but whose sense of right and wrong is laser-focused on the wrong things — and uninterested in hearing alternate viewpoints. I feel that same sense of stifled-ness and eye-rolling exasperation that Ifemelu feels about Blaine, but I know I make a different subset of my own acquaintances feel that way too.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone — most particularly, my white American friends.