A book review by Azza El Masri
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, class has appeared to dominate discourses of conflict in most developed and developing societies, and often overshadow parallel struggles of gender, and race.
However, in Americanah, Adichie tells a poignant story against the backdrop of racial tensions in the West and other experiences such as immigration, deportation, marriage, sex, and the eternal pursuit of the American dream.
Americanah is not a simple love story. It is raw, realistic, and very modern. The story begins in Lagos, Nigeria, where Ifemelu and Obinze meet as teenagers and are propelled into a whirlwind courtship. But they become driven apart by college opportunities abroad on one hand and familial duties on the other.
The Nigeria that Adichie describes is corrupt, under military-backed government, and socially divided. It is a Nigeria that is entrenched in the normalcy of family affairs, and teenage love stories, but it is a country that doesn’t see the issue of race.
But the protagonists discover that in the United States race does matter. It is hierarchical, patriarchal, and inevitable. It looms over daily interactions, in arbitrary security checks and income gaps, and often drives itself in as a wedge in interracial relationships..
Obinze prospers and begins to amass inexplicable wealth in Nigeria. And although Ifemelu had not left his mind since she has left, he forces himself to move on, marry and bear a child with his wife. But despite all of the hardship they both face and the years that flee by, when they finally meet again, they will have to make the hardest decision of their lives.
Adichie writes with sobriety and ruthlessness, and doesn’t care about being fluffy and politically correct. She drives the nail home in her real depictions of immigration experiences, and paints caricature-like portraits of authority figures, whether American or Nigerian, through the lens of Ifemelu’s gaze.
Poignant, heroic, and absolutely necessary, Americanah brings the matters of race and immigration to the forefront of a discourse largely shielded by tiptoeing policies and political-correctness.
