Coming into this novel, I knew two things about author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: her significance as a feminist figure, and the recent criticism she received after a blog post she wrote in response to some past controversy. I’ve read the blog, and I have opinions about the blog, but I cannot sit here and write about how the blog sits with me — I must sit here and write about how Americanah sits with me.
Americanah is a book I simply never got around to for a very long time, and by the time I did, my experience was tainted. I came into this novel with an eye far more critical than it had been just a few months ago, and instead of admiring the merits, I was magnifying the faults.
On page 403, Paula reads aloud from one of Ifemelu’s blogs, which describes how unhelpful assertions such as ‘I can’t be racist if I have black friends’ and ‘But slavery ended centuries ago’ are, and how they belittle and invalidate the still-lived experiences of American Black people. In the concluding paragraph, Ifemelu writes, “Try listening. maybe. Hear what is being said. And remember that it’s not about you.” But this very courtesy Ifemelu describes, Adichie does not extend herself to the trans community.
Americanah is a powerful story about race and identity by an author who at times struggles to practice what she preaches, and because humans are fatally dualistic in terms of good and bad, we struggle to see just how deeply human it is to have grey area. But coming into this mentality gave me an interesting perspective on this novel that probably would’ve taken me a bit longer to find otherwise.
One of the foundational pillars of Americanah is the theme of authenticity. And I bring up authenticity because it’s messy. Being true to oneself and one’s values is difficult, especially when those things can sometimes be at odds with the world around you, and even at arms with each other. Ifemelu struggled to take pride in where she came from in a society that punishes those who fail to assimilate with where they go.
It’s in the first pages that Ifemelu’s journey with authenticity begins for readers. Adichie writes, speaking of Ifemelu’s blog, “The more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet one more scale of self until she felt naked and false (Adichie 6).” I tend to be quite liberal when marking quotes that stand out to me, but this idea of rewriting herself to appease others is one that I constantly come back to, and one that Ifemelu constantly grapples with. She lies to the hairdressers that she’s been in America longer than is true, she fakes an American accent, she relaxes her hair. These things are not who she is, but they are things she does out of either necessity to survive as a non-American Black person, or out of some sense of obligation to do so in order to be accepted and thrive as such.
So, in short? Sometimes people are hypocrites. Sometimes they do things that contradict what they say or believe. We contain multitudes, or whatever the poets used to say. And that’s ultimately what Americanah is: the story of a woman who is trying to figure out how all the pieces of who she is fit into the person she wants to be, while still trying to figure out who that person is.
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