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Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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One of The New York Times's Ten Best Books of the Year
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a Chicago Tribune Best Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick.
A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
- Sales Rank: #474 in Books
- Size: Inquiries - by email
- Brand: Home Comforts
- Published on: 2014-03-04
- Released on: 2014-03-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x 1.06" w x 5.12" l, .98 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 588 pages
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- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Paperback 2014 New Free Shipping
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* To the women in the hair-braiding salon, Ifemelu seems to have everything a Nigerian immigrant in America could desire, but the culture shock, hardships, and racism she’s endured have left her feeling like she has “cement in her soul.” Smart, irreverent, and outspoken, she reluctantly left Nigeria on a college scholarship. Her aunty Uju, the pampered mistress of a general in Lagos, is now struggling on her own in the U.S., trying to secure her medical license. Ifemelu’s discouraging job search brings on desperation and depression until a babysitting gig leads to a cashmere-and-champagne romance with a wealthy white man. Astonished at the labyrinthine racial strictures she’s confronted with, Ifemelu, defining herself as a “Non-American Black,” launches an audacious, provocative, and instantly popular blog in which she explores what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome. Meanwhile, her abandoned true love, Obinze, is suffering his own cold miseries as an unwanted African in London. MacArthur fellow Adichie (The Thing around Your Neck, 2009) is a word-by-word virtuoso with a sure grasp of social conundrums in Nigeria, East Coast America, and England; an omnivorous eye for resonant detail; a gift for authentic characters; pyrotechnic wit; and deep humanitarianism. Americanah is a courageous, world-class novel about independence, integrity, community, and love and what it takes to become a “full human being.” --Donna Seaman
From Bookforum
It is not a stretch to say that her finely observed new book, which combines perfectly calibrated social satire and heartfelt emotion, stands with Invisible Man and The Bluest Eye as a defining work about the experience of being black in America.--Ruth Franklin
Review
“Dazzling. . . . Funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise. . . . Brilliant.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A very funny, very warm and moving intergenerational epic that confirms Adichie’s virtuosity, boundless empathy and searing social acuity.”
—Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King
“Masterful. . . . An expansive, epic love story. . . . Pulls no punches with regard to race, class and the high-risk, heart-tearing struggle for belonging in a fractured world.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“[A] knockout of a novel about immigration, American dreams, the power of first love, and the shifting meanings of skin color. . . . A marvel.”
—NPR
“A cerebral and utterly transfixing epic. . . . Americanah is superlative at making clear just how isolating it can be to live far away from home. . . . Unforgettable.”
—The Boston Globe
“Witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic . . . a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. . . . A steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience. ”
—The New York Times Book Review
“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 Washington Post
“Gorgeous. . . . A bright, bold book with unforgettable swagger that proves it sometimes takes a newcomer to show Americans to ourselves.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Part love story, part social critique, and one of the best [novels] you’ll read this year. . . . Characters are richly drawn. . . . Adichie digs in deeply, finding a way to make them fresh.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Brave . . . Americanah tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk. . . . [The novel] brings a cleansing frankness to an old, picked scab on the face of the Republic. It’s not healing, and it’s not going away.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“So smart about so many subjects that to call it a novel about being black in the 21st century doesn’t even begin to convey its luxurious heft and scope. . . . Capacious, absorbing and original.”
—Jennifer Reese, NPR
“One of the freshest pieces of fiction of the year. . . . Adichie’s style of writing is familiar and personal. . . . An engrossing, all-encompassing read.”
—New York Observer
“Superb . . . 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.”
—Vogue
“A near-flawless novel, one whose language so beautifully captures the surreal experience of an African becoming an American that one walks away with the sense of having read something definitive.”
—The Seattle Times
“An important book . . . its strength and originality lie with the meticulous observation about race—about how embarrassed many Americans are about racial stereotypes, even as they continue to repeat them, about how casual racism still abounds.”
—The Economist
“Moving.”
—The Huffington Post
“[Americanah] presents a warm, digressive and wholly achieved sense of how African lives are lived in Nigeria, in America and in the places between.”
—The Financial Times
“Glorious. . . . Americanah provide[s] Adichie with a fictional vehicle for all kinds of pithy, sharply sensible commentary on race and culture—and us with a symphonic, polyphonic, full-immersion opportunity to think outside the American box.”
—Elle
“Winning . . . [Adichie] is a writer of copious gifts . . . breath[ing] life into characters whose fates absorb us. . . . She shows us ourselves through new eyes.”
—Newsday
“Adichie defines the sum of disparate cultures with new clarity, while questions of identity and love remain elusive as ever.”
—Interview magazine
Most helpful customer reviews
355 of 412 people found the following review helpful.
Racism, Hair, Blogging, and Life in America for the Non-American Black Person
By Fairbanks Reader - Bonnie Brody
Americanah is a wonderful epic saga of love, hair, blogs, racism in America, and life in Nigeria. It takes place over a period of about 15 years and is primarily about a Nigerian woman named Ifemelu and her first love, Obinze. The word Americanah refers to a person who returns to Nigeria after time abroad.
The main part of the story takes place in a hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey. Ifemelu is on a fellowship at Princeton and the nearest place to get weaves is in Trenton. As she is getting her hair done she goes back in time and the reader gets filled in with her life story.
Ifemelu grew up in poverty in Lagos. She managed to go to university there and won a scholarship to Wellson, a college in Philadelphia. There, she struggles with money and finds it very difficult to get a job. She knows little about the culture and "she hungered to understand everything about America, to wear a new, knowing skin right away." When she does work, she sends money back home to her parents. Ifemulu's primary job is as a nanny. She describes the dynamics of her employer's marriage as `she loves him and he loves himself'. She is introduced to her employer's cousin Curt and Ifemelu and he have a relationship for quite a while. His being white and rich cause some difficulties for them.
Ifemelu has cut off all contact with Obinze despite the fact that they had planned to be together. She had made a choice to do something that left her shamed and abased and she is unable to tell Obinze about it. So, rather than tell him, she severs their contact. He is distraught and does not know what to do. He continues to write to her for months but there is no answer from Ifemelu.
Meanwhile, Obinze goes to London where he lives underground after his six month visa expires. "He lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch." He works construction and continues to do this until he is deported back to Nigeria.
Ifemelu remains in the United States for 13 years and has a series of relationships with different men. Of significance besides Curt, who is white, is Blaine who is African American and a professor at Yale. Theirs is a long-term relationship that Ifemelu breaks off in order to return to Lagos.
Ifemelu has started a blog called "Raceteenth: Understanding America for the Non-American Black." She writes anonymously about varied topics of racism that she encounters in the United States and the differences between being African American and a non-American black person. Her blog is very successful and brings her status and money as people make financial contributions to keep the blog going. She also does speaking engagements about topics she covers in her blog. "The blog had unveiled itself and shed its milk teeth; by turns, it surprised her, pleased her, left her behind. Its readers increased by the thousands from all over the world, so quickly that she resisted checking the stats, reluctant to know how many new people had clicked to read her that day, because it frightened her. And it exhilarated her."
The book has many characters in it, each of whom we come to know and connect with. However, it is primarily about Ifemelu and Obinze, their lives and love. I found the book fascinating and very readable. It does not ever let go of the messages that the author seeks to provide the reader. Racism is a constant theme in the book as is life in America for black Americans and non-American blacks. I found the idea of blogging as a way to share knowledge very intriguing. Actual blogs are a part of the book.
Adichie is a wonderful writer. Her short stories, all of which I've read, have knocked me out. I plan on reading her other novels. I can see why this brilliant woman has received a MacArthur Genius Award. I highly recommend this book.
378 of 447 people found the following review helpful.
A Bloated Blog
By Roger Brunyate
At the opening of this long and too, too solid novel, Ifemelu, its protagonist is about to return to Nigeria when her fellowship at Princeton ends. After fifteen years in America, she has learned enough to write a lifestyle blog called "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black." A mouthful, but she has eyes in her head and a savage wit. Before it even develops as a story, Adichie's book is likely to interest us in much the same way that a blog would, whether to convey Ifemelu's first impressions of America (starting with tipping, dressing down for parties, and how to get a job on a student visa), or her flashbacks to her native land. Watching her grow up in Lagos, for example, we meet her father who is sacked from his civil service job for his refusal to address his superior as "Mummy," and her cousin Uju, a fully-qualified doctor who nonetheless lives as the kept mistress of a prominent General. Simply on the level of information and what can be gleaned from a different viewpoint, the book is fascinating.
But what about the story? If you read the summary inside the cover (presumably to become the book-flap blurb), you will see that it starts with two high-school sweethearts in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze. You read that Ifemelu will obtain a visa for the USA and move there for fifteen years, but that Obinze, who stayed to finish his degree in Nigeria, was excluded by an America fearful after 9/11 so instead spent several years living illegally in London. Finally, you will be told that Ifemelu and Obinze meet up again on her return and "face the toughest decisions of their lives." All well and good, but most of this story takes place in the first 100 pages; the meeting-up and not-so-tough decisions occupy only the last 50 pages of a 475-page book. So in between, there are around 300 pages that have very little narrative thrust at all, but are basically a commentary on daily life in the various countries -- the raw materials, in fact, for Ifemelu's blog.
Paradoxically, my interest picked up at first when I came to this section, because Adichie's observations are just so spot-on. So, for example, when she is interviewed for a job as a nanny by a woman on the Philadelphia Main Line: 'Ifemelu would come to realize later that Kimberly used "beautiful" in a peculiar way. "I'm meeting my beautiful friend from graduate school," Kimberly would say, or "We're working with this beautiful woman on the inner-city project," and always the woman she referred to would turn out to be quite ordinary-looking, but always black.' Ouch! And most of her observations are equally acute. But once Ifemelu actually starts "Raceteenth," we come to a long series of chapters whose sole purpose is to set up the blog posting that is printed verbatim after each. There are cocktail and dinner parties whose only function is to display American (or in one case British) attitudes to race. Much attention is paid to the rise of Barack Obama and contemporary reactions to it, all parsed with 20/20 hindsight. We soon feel that the developments in Ifemelu's life -- her jobs, partners, challenges, and opportunities -- exist as object lessons rather than the organic growth of a person we care about. But there is one scene that Adichie keeps returning to, a pan-African conversation when Ifemelu gets her hair braided in a Trenton storefront salon; this has more depth than most of what surrounds it -- and it is hardly coincidental that it takes place after her blog has been shut down.
The last section of the novel, back in contemporary Lagos, briefly gains traction with similarly sharp insights into Nigerian life. But it is hardly worth the hundreds of pages of preaching we must read through to reach it. The publisher should have edited this novel down to half its length, and paid Adichie to bring out that blog separately. But this unwieldy combination of the two is a bloated hybrid that does its talented author no favors.
44 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
A Wonderful Read
By Valkyrie
I am probably biased towards this novel, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, not only because Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which I read as a very young girl, awoke in me the possibility of good writing and beautiful prose by a Nigerian like me, but because of the familiarity of the book. In Nigeria, we are brought up on foreign movies, sitcoms and TV shows, foreign books and foreign news, we know how English should be spoken, and many of us who bother to read a lot, are very familiar with the colloquialisms of the west. This is perhaps why, we do not recognize how much we miss our own particularly Nigerian way of expression, in the literature we read. It is perhaps why, when we read a phrase that is essentially Nigerian, in a novel like Americanah, "Tina-Tina, how now?" "Why are you looking like a mumu?" "How will you cope/how are you coping?" all familiar Nigerian modes of speech, we are infinitely grateful.
It's like the word Americanah, such a Nigerian word, used to describe someone who had lived abroad for so long, they no longer understand the nuances of being Nigerian. They use American swearwords, or complain that the fries at KFC Onikan are limp, even though you see nothing wrong with them. This is when you turn to someone who understands and say, (No mind am, na Americanah), Don't mind him, he is an Americanah.
Adichie's latest follows Ifemelu, a bright, sharp and observant girl, from her early years in 1990's Nigeria, to a life in America, where after the first rude shocks of culture change in a new world, where `fat' is a bad word and not merely a statement of fact, where colour is such a big issue that it can rule people's lives, and where everything is different, she slowly and surely starts to become an Americanah.
In Americanah, ifemelu observes, and we are informed by her observations, she converses and we see her character, and she remembers, and in her memories we see a rich story that begins in Lagos, journeys through the cities of America, and gains a body that is beautiful to savour. It is through Ifemelu's observations, we experience what Americana is about.
Hair, specifically Black/African hair. Why do black women hide their hair? Would Beyonce ever allow the world to see her hair the way it really is, or would Michelle Obama? These are the questions Ifemelu asks In her blog, where after having lived in the United States for a long time, she broaches issues of race, hair and life in America from the eyes of a `Non-American Black'.
We experience race, Kimberley, the white woman who uses beautiful as a word to describe `black', because for whichever reason, black is a word that should be said as little as possible. Kurt, to whom Ifemelu's race means nothing, and Blaine, the Black American Yale professor, whose influence, in my opinion, would be the biggest in turning Ifemelu's observations from the disinterested and amused observation of a `Non-American Black' or `NAB', who calmly tells Kimberly, "You know, you can just say `black.' Not every black person is beautiful." to those of an `American Black' or `AB', who would say in her blog. "If the "slavery was so long ago" thing comes up, have your white friend say that lots of white folks are still inheriting money that their families made a hundred years ago. So if that legacy lives, why not the legacy of slavery?" The old Ifemelu would have told the descendants of the slaves to `get over it'.
We also experience love, Adichie herself describes Americanah as a love story, and this is true. There is love in almost every book, but in Americanah, it is not incidental, it is a central part of the story. Before America, and race and hair became issues, there was Obinze, the love of Ifemelu's teenage life. If Ifemelu, the daughter of a civil servant who lost his job because he would not bow to the excessive respect that Lagos Yoruba's employ and call his boss `Mummy', and uses English in such a way as to provide a hilarious sort of comic relief, is sharp and confident, then Obinze, the only son of a university professor, with his love for American books and his quiet belief in himself, is self assured and mature. They fall in love soon after they meet as secondary school students in Lagos, and when Ifemelu tells her aunt and friend, Uju, about him, saying she has met the love of her life, there is a hilarious moment when Aunt Uju advises her to "let him kiss and touch but not to let him put it inside."
While most of the story is seen though Ifemelu's eyes and memories, we also get to see some of Obinze, we follow him to London, where he lives as an illegal immigrant, after failing to find a job in Nigeria, or to fulfill his dream of going to America, (he later visits America, when he becomes rich, and isn't impressed, he lost interest when he realized that he could buy his way in.) He is arrested on the eve of his sham wedding, and repatriated. In all this Obinze never loses a certain `solidity', that he seems to effortlessly possess. In a democratic Nigeria, where a new middle class is rising, and the money that used to be the preserve of the top army generals starts to filter down, Obinze gets lucky in the way that only happens in Nigeria, where there really is too much money, and overnight he is a very rich man.
When Ifemelu starts to hunger for home, Obinze, with whom she has lost touch, is already a husband and father. "Meanwhile o, he has serious money now. See what you missed!" her friend, Ranyinudo tells her, on a call from Nigeria. (How Nigerian to say something like that!) The central question becomes, will they get back together? To some, this is a weakness of the story, the descent into the fantasy of a happily ever after for the heroine and hero, but it is not such a bad thing in itself, it makes enjoyable, and hopeful reading.
In summary, I loved the story. I loved the familiarity of it, Ifemelu's mother's ridiculous religiousness, her fathers ludicrous use of English, Aunty Uju, Ginika, Kayode, Emenike, who is perhaps one of the more interesting characters, as he strives to shed the life he was born with, to become what he wishes to be, and all the other different kinds of people that make up the rich tapestry that is Nigerian life.
Ifemelu is an interesting character, observant, watchful, sure of herself, even as a teenager, she is confident in a way I wouldn't have understood at that age. Obinze, knows himself in such a way that he doesn't need to follow any crowd, or have anybody validate him. However, I did feel that the ending was rather rushed, as if the author had other things to do, and was hastily putting the final scenes together.
The main grouse I had with the book was the fact that I saw some elements from Adichie's previous works. When Barrack Obama wins the election and her cousin Dike calls her to say that his president is black like him, I remember an interview long ago where Adichie says that her nephew had said the exact same thing after the elections. It make me feel cheated, this, the similarity of her relationship with Curt to the relationship of the characters in her short story, The Thing Around Your Neck; when Obinze describes his house in Enugu, and I see the house in Birdsong, the scene of another adulterous affair in another of her old short stories. How autobiographical is her work then? I ask myself. I begin to feel suspicious, perhaps all the characters are really her and the people she knows, perhaps Pat Peoples is really Matthew Quick, and Nick Hornby's characters are really just himself?
I noticed that apart from Dike, her little cousin, and Obinze, and perhaps Obinze's mother, Ifemelu does not seem very emotionally involved with the people that shape her life, sometimes she seems like a watcher, an observer, and not a character in the story. Also, because this novel is really many observations and opinions, sometimes it does feel contrived, like a character or event has been introduced, solely because they are a means to present an issue Adichie wants to discuss. Lastly, I did not find the blog interesting, unlike the prose of the novel, the writing is not fluid, or vey descriptive, and seems to jump from one issue to another, trying to cram many thoughts into one jumbled package. This may be because I am not an NAB, and those issues mean little to me, perhaps the AB's would read it differently.
Regardless, Americanah is a wonderful read, sometimes laugh out loud funny, sometimes sad, but always interesting.
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