Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — 2013

WINNER 2013 – National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction FINALIST 2014 – Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction FINALIST 2014 – Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction LONGLISTED 2015 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award A searing new novel, at once sweeping and intimate, by the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun: a story of love and race centered around a man and woman from Nigeria who seemed destined to be together--until the choices they are forced to make tear them apart. Ifemelu--beautiful, self-assured--left Nigeria 15 years ago, and now studies in Princeton as a Graduate Fellow. She seems to have fulfilled every immigrant's dream: Ivy League education; success as a writer of a wildly popular political blog; money for the things she needs. But what came before is more like a nightmare: wrenching departure from family; humiliating jobs under a false name. She feels for the first time the weight of something she didn't think about back home: race. Obinze--handsome and kind-hearted--was Ifemelu's teenage love; he'd hoped to join her in America, but post 9/11 America wouldn't let him in. Obinze's journey leads him to back alleys of illegal employment in London; to a fake marriage for the sake of a work card, and finally, to a set of handcuffs as he is exposed and deported. Years later, when they reunite in Nigeria, neither is the same person who left home. Obinze is the kind of successful "Big Man" he'd scorned in his youth, and Ifemelu has become an "Americanah"--a different version of her former self, one with a new accent and attitude. As they revisit their shared passion--for their homeland and for each other--they must face the largest challenges of their lives. Spanning three continents, entering the lives of a richly drawn cast of characters across numerous divides, Americanah is a riveting story of love and expectation set in today's globalized world.

Reviews

Tahrioui@nouredine

Aug 17, 2023

I really recommend this book, you get a perspective from Americans and nigerians.

This review contains a spoiler

Lily Elizabeth Labella@lel_737

Aug 9, 2023

Beautiful beautiful so much more than a will they won't they.

I learned a lot about race and discussing race and also learned what 'real enterprise' is.

sage lynn@sagelvnn

Nov 21, 2022

pretty solid. i enjoyed reading it although sometimes the structure interfered with my enjoyment of it because it would switch to a different part of the timeline right as i was getting invested. the blog aspect was really fun.

sarah schrijvers@sarahschrijvers

Feb 20, 2025

OK@olyavolja

Dec 28, 2024

Laura Friel@laura97

Sep 15, 2024

Highlights

sage lynn@sagelvnn

He was already looking at the relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love is familial, somehow linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.

Page 357

This highlight contains a spoiler

sage lynn@sagelvnn

The wind blowing across the British Isles was odorous with the fear of asylum seekers, infecting everybody with the panic of impending doom, and so articles were written and read, simply and stridently, as though the writers lived in a world in which the present was unconnected to the past, and they had never considered this to be the normal course of history: the influx into Britain of black and brown people from countries created by Britain.

Page 320

This highlight contains a spoiler

sage lynn@sagelvnn

Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that small room full of shadows. It had all seemed benign before, her mother’s faith, all drenched in grace, and suddenly it no longer was. She wished, fleetingly, that her mother was not her mother, and for this she felt not guilt and sadness but a single emotion, a blend of guilt and sadness.

Page 63

sage lynn@sagelvnn

They fascinated him, the unsubtle cowering of the almost rich in the presence of the rich, and the rich in the presence of the very rich; to have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money.

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