Americanah Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Language: English | ISBN:
B00A9ET4MC | Format: EPUB
Americanah Description
One of TheNew York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.
As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.
From the Hardcover edition.- File Size: 1482 KB
- Print Length: 497 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0007306229
- Publisher: Anchor (May 14, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00A9ET4MC
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #337 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > African American - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > African
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > African American - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > African
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.
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.
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