Throughout Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah, the theme of adaptation is shown and displays Ifemelu as a dynamic character. Although Ifemelu is Nigerian, the culture of the United States makes it difficult for her to fit in between being African American and African. Ifemelu was rather traditional at the beginning of the story and chose not to fold into American standards. This set her aside from other Nigerian women because oftentimes they would try to blend in with other Americans and jeopardize their originality in the process. An example of this would be the professional beauty standard for African American women.
Generally speaking, women relax their hair to make it look more professional. Ifemelu only decides to do this when she applies for a job in hopes of getting her green card. Although the process burns, Ifemelu is reassured by the hairdresser by stating that “Wow, girl, you’ve got the white-girl swing!” (Adichie 204). Her boyfriend of the time, Curt, was disappointed and hurt by her hair because he saw that she was not comfortable with it. He also saw the physical pain that the relaxer brought her as her scalp oozed with pus after the relaxer burned her (Adichie 205). Due to the fact that Ifemelu was told at the interview that she did an amazing job, she wonders if the interviewer's reaction would be the same if she had her afro.
Ifemelu was willing to sacrifice her originality for the potential success of her future. In this she also sacrificed her hair all together. It began to fall out and Ifemelu was unknowingly trapping herself. Ifemelu’s friend from college, Wambui, stated that “relaxing your hair is like being in prison” (Adichie 209). When Wambui convinced Ifemelu to cut her hair off and start fresh, Ifemelu panicked. She felt ugly and called into work for days.
Hair was shown as a symbol for the embedded racism of America in the entirety of the novel. The connection to having straight and silky hair was not something that happened naturally for African women such as Ifemelu. When she began relaxing her hair it made her feel beautiful and accepting of herself. Ifemelu was unaware of the hurt she caused herself emotionally. The trauma Ifemelu caused herself to “blend in” realistically bruised her originality. The question to be asked is: Was it worth it?
ReplyDeleteWas changing herself worth staying in America? Ifemelu needed a job to stay in America. Curt recommended this job, and explained that she would get the job if “aced” the interview (Adichie 249). Ifemelu was not confident that her experience and education would land her the job. In order to ace the interview she needed to do the opposite of what she had done in her previously unsuccessful interviews. She needed to conform to American beauty standards to stay in America.
After relaxing her hair, she won over the employers and was hired. Ifemelu could get her green card… with the cost of destroying her hair. She battled with keeping her hair straight and perfect, but it fell out (Adichie 258). Ifemelu could not change. She had to find a solution: being comfortable with herself and being supported by people going through the same thing. This led her to HappilyKinkyNappy.com, a hair blog with thousands of posts written by women who embrace their hair (Adichie 259). This was a safe space for Ifemelu to grow back into her natural self, while her hair grew.
Curt thought that the blog was a great place for struggling Ifemelu. He referred to the blog as a “movement” (Adichie 263). For Ifemelu, it was a community of people like her. It was support she could not get from Curt, who would never understand her hair battle. Eventually, Ifemelu would start a blog that would be a place of belonging for others like the hair blog had been for her. Her blog became a “movement” for people who had to continuously conform to fit into American culture. So was it worth it? Maybe. If she would have kept her hair natural, she would not have known how difficult it was to physically reject American standards. After putting her hair in prison, she was liberated by others who were liberated before her, embracing their natural hair. With initial support of these women, Ifemelu was led to write her blog about rejection and not being fully accepted into American culture. She created a community of people needing a place to belong. So, maybe it was worth it.
The observation in this post about hair representing racism in America can be further developed into how Adichie uses Ifemelu’s hair journey as a parallel metaphor to describe the state of Ifemelu’s identity throughout the novel. In other words, Ifemelu’s hair often represents how Ifemelu views herself and whether or not she accepts or rejects her Americanah identity. When the incident with the relaxer during pages 251-252 happen, Ifemelu had reached a peak in her identity loss. She had embraced being American, but in all the ways that would be painful to her later as we later see that she had to cut off all her hair. Further proving this point, Adichie describes Ifemelu as “Curt’s Girlfriend” (241) as though her Nigerian identity at this point in the novel was washed away. She was Americanah.
ReplyDeleteWhen Ifemelu cuts off all her hair, it serves as a new beginning for her where she gets to rediscover her identity through loving her hair. The website that she visits on page 262 helps her love herself again through her hair. But was the relaxer worth it? For Ifemelu, I think it was worth it for her to have something happen to her that leads her back to her original identity.
This blog post has excellently showed how important of a symbol hair was throughout the entirety of the novel. Hair served as a metaphor for Ifemelu’s identity as most of Americanah’s setting occurs in the hair salon as she gets her hair braided.
ReplyDeleteIfemelu has a personal connection with hair as it represents her lack of confidence and identity as she fought between being Nigerian and black American. By relaxing her hair she feels as if she is killing a part of herself and this cultural stigmatism of needing to somewhat make their hair similar to a white person’s hair is a symbol of racism. We see many acts of racism both explicitly and implicitly through social hierarchies where popular women magazines “never have natural haired women in their pages” (213) and how all magazines have “small-breasted skinny white women” on their cover. Ifemelu’s interactions at the salon further her fear of having become too “Americanized” because she chooses to eat a granola bar instead of having Chinese food like the rest of the stylists. Her stylist, Aisha questions Ifemelu’s ability to speak fluent Igbo because she seems American to them.
Thus, in a country like America, Ifemelu figures out that being yourself isn’t possible and in order to survive one must adapt to the cultural notions accepted everywhere.
Honestly speaking, I am not a big fan of Ifemelu's character. In my understanding, she is judgemental, sensitive, stubborn with high self-esteem, at the same time, she is an idealist who is always searching for her ideal state in life and relationships. None of these fit into my values. However, I greatly appreciate her judgment and sensitivity. Without them, we could not see the process of how she fights with her desires, her confusion, and the offensive people around her; we could not see the thought-provoking blog posts and could not reflect as deeply as we would towards the racism problem. Coming back to the question: was it worth it? Ifemelu must have asked herself this question a thousand times. From hating to apply relaxer on her hair, "'I look so ugly I'm scared of myself'... Ifemelu was still staring at her hair. What had she done?" (210), to "she fell in love with her hair" (215), the book vividly described her struggles through conversation, action and psychological activies. This is not only to describe racism in America but to let people feel her vulnerability and think together with her critical mind. I believe Ifemelu's answer to the question is no, it was not worth it. That's why she refused to speak American English, returned to Nigeria after ~13 years and eventually returned to her very first lover.
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