Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Picture from http://chimamanda.com/books/americanah/

Ifemulu sits in a hot salon waiting for her hair to be braided. She is reading Jean Toomer's Cane (I never heard about it before)
A white woman who wants a Bo Derek corn row says she knows about Africa from reading Things Fall Apart and A Bend in the River (Ifemelu then disses Naipaul's work about a" man who aspired to Europeanness", and later on she has a book of Derek Walcott on her shelf)  The woman asks Ifemulu what the novel is about. Ifemulu thinks "“Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.”"

Americanah is not about one thing - it is about black and white, and black and black (and some white and white) and black and non-white and African and African-American and American African and comebackees (Americanah is a word for Nigerians who return from America) and those who never left and Igbo and non-Igbo and Nigerian and non-Nigerian, and class - poor academics and idealists and the newly rich like the woman who "had made a lot of money in General Abacha's government" and who had become " a certain kind of middle-aged Lagos woman, dried up by disappointments, blighted by bitterness , the sprinkle of pimples on her forehead smothered in heavy foundation."



Ifemulu is sexy, (like Adichie). Sexy in the way in which the words are woven and then some of the sharpest comments are inserted at unexpected moments and you either "ketch you breath and say '' dis woman'" or you buss out a laff and feel bad because you know the reason you laughing is that you middle class like Ifemulu and you 'get the satire' .  Some of the quotes here show the style.  There is clever self-deprecation too.. like when one piece of Ifemulu's writing is described as 'snarky'.

Ifemulu and Obinze leave Nigeria, one for the USA and the other for UK. Obinze is deported after two years. Ifemulu spends thirteen years away.  Ifemulu loves, has sex, cheats , blogs, and then goes back to Nigeria.

The book has Igbo, and food, and music in it, like the two songs Ifemulu and Obinze listen to when they meet up again.





Yori Yori (Brackett)

Obi Wun O




The Caribbean features - references to the fear of the Jamaican women in London  ; and the similarity with the Grenadian upbrining "“Ifemelu and Jane laughed when they discovered how similar their childhoods in Grenada and Nigeria had been, with Enid Blyton books and Anglophile teachers and fathers who worshipped the BBC World Service.”

The book was the perfect Christmas read.