''Americanah'' is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ( ; born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction. She was described in ''The Times Literary Supplement'' as "the most prominent" of a "procession of criticall ...
, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S.
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". ''Americanah'' tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published on May 14, 2013 by
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
. A television miniseries, starring and produced by
Lupita Nyong'o
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (, ; ; born 1 March 1983) is a Kenyan-Mexican actress. She is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Lupita Nyong'o, several accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award, and nominations for ...
, was in development for
HBO Max
HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Netw ...
, but then was later dropped.
Summary
Americanah is about Ifemelu and Obinze who, as teenagers in a
Lagos
Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the List of cities in Africa by population, second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national ca ...
secondary school, fall in love.
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
at the time is under
military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer.
The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...
, and people are seeking to leave the country. Ifemelu moves to the United States to study, where she struggles for the first time with racism and the many varieties of racial distinctions: for the first time, Ifemelu discovers what it means to be a "Black Person". Obinze had hoped to join her in the U.S. but he is denied a visa after
9/11
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
. He goes to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, eventually becoming an undocumented immigrant after his visa expires.
Years later, Obinze returns to Nigeria and becomes a wealthy man as a property developer in the newly democratic country. Ifemelu gains success in the United States, where she becomes known for her blog about race in America, entitled "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black". When Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, the two consider reviving a relationship in light of their diverging experiences and identities during their many years apart.
Characters
* Ifemelu – The protagonist. She is born in Lagos, Nigeria, and studies in America.
* Obinze – Raised in Nsukka, Nigeria. His mother, a professor, taught him how to cook and fostered his love of books.
* Obinze's Mother – Obinz professor at Nsukka University and a widow. She struggles with outdated Nigerian attitudes towards women.
* Ifemelu's Mother and Father – Ifemelu's mother is a devout evangelical Christian who fasts dangerously in order to drive the devil out of her family's life. Ifemelu's father is powerless to stop her. He unexpectedly loses his job at a federal agency and is unable to support his family.
* Aunty Uju – Ifemelu's father’s cousin. She acts as Ifemelu's older sister. She starts a relationship with the General, and gives birth to a son, Dike. After the General dies, Uju moves to America, where she struggles to continue the medical training she began in Nigeria.
* Dike – The son of Aunty Uju and the General. Born in the United States, he is named after Uju's father, and given her surname. After his birth, Dike and Uju return to Nigeria where his first birthday is spent; soon after, his father dies in a plane crash. Dike and Uju flee Nigeria to escape the poverty that would result from his father's relatives confiscate their resources. He lives first in New York, then Massachusetts. His suicide attempt devastates his family and underlines the difficulty immigrant families face when trying to integrate into American society.
* The General – Aunty Uju's lover and father of Dike.
* Curt – Ifemelu's first American boyfriend,
white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
.
* Blaine – Ifemelu's second American boyfriend, a
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
assistant professor at Yale who writes a blog about race and popular culture. Ifemelu moves to
New Haven
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
to live with him.
* Shan – Blaine's sister, a writer who is often critical of others.
* Kosi – Obinze's wife and the mother of his child.
* Buchi – Obinze and Kosi's daughter.
* Ginika – Ifemelu's friend, whom she knew when she met Obinze.
Themes
Americanization
Americanization is one of the biggest themes in ''Americanah''. In the context of the novel, America itself is a symbol of hope, wealth, social and economic mobility, and, ultimately, disappointment, as Ifemelu learns that the American Dream is a lie and that the advantages she enjoys there often come at a great price. Her Americanization is slow but distinct, and she gradually picks up the slang, adapts to her surroundings (for better or worse), and adopts American politics. Her views on gender and race change because of this, and her blog is devoted to exploring the issue of race as a non-American black in America. She's called ''Americanah'' when she returns to Nigeria, having picked up a blunt, American way of speaking and of addressing problems. She resists this label, but it's obvious to the reader that Ifemelu's years in America have changed her.
According to Idowu Faith, “no valid statement can be made on ''Americanah'' without deconstructing the term “Americanah” which, more or less, reveals the thesis of the narrative as well as the preoccupation of Adichie in the text.” In Nigerian parlance, the term “Americanah” is an identity term that is premised on a person’s previous experience of living in America. In an interview, Adichie defines Americanah as describing those who have been to the US and return with American affectations, pretend not to understand their mother tongues any longer, and refuse to eat Nigerian food, making constant reference to their life in America.
From this understanding, it is clear that Ifemelu’s decision to return home without worrying about being identified as an “Americanah”, establishes the fact that Adichie is proposing and charting a path for a new kind of migration story whose quintessence is return migration.
Gender
Adichie's explorations of sexual education and the perception of sex among youngsters in Nigeria plays a fundamental role in the journey of Ifemelu exploring her sexuality as an adolescent in a puritan post-colonial society.
Migration
While many of the migratory experiences in the novel work within migration theory, Adichie simultaneously transcends the borders of international migration theories by introducing a new factor that both influences migration and projects a new perspective on return migration. According to Dustmann and Weiss (2007:237), lack of economic opportunity and escape from natural disaster/persecution are two main reasons individuals migrate throughout history. While identifying the need to flee “choicelessness” as the main reason for much of the migration in the twenty-first century Nigerian setting of the novel, Adichie uses literary dimensions to shake up the foundations of theory. Consequently, the direction of this type of migration, how it affects the bonds of love, how it changes personalities and cultural views, and how it reinterprets identity become the novelist’s major theoretical engagements. In addition, Adichie is concerned with how migration debases and elevates, how it barters and fulfills and, most significantly, how it reinvents.
Reception
Reviews
Critics praised the novel, especially noting its range across different societies and reflection of global tensions. Writing for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Mike Peed said, "'Americanah' examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it's also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience—a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie's observations." Peed concluded, "'Americanah' is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false." Reviewing the novel for ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'',
Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau is an American fiction writer, essayist, and Professor of Creative Writing at the City College of New York.
Early life
Raboteau grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of Princeton professor Albert Raboteau. She received an undergra ...
called Adichie "a hawkeyed observer of manners and distinctions in class," and said Adichie brings a "ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both" the United States and Nigeria. In the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'', Laura Pearson wrote, "Sprawling, ambitious and gorgeously written, 'Americanah' covers
race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
,
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
,
migration
Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration
* Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another
** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...
, intimacy, estrangement,
blogging
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
, books and
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
. It covers three continents, spans decades, leaps gracefully, from chapter to chapter, to different cities and other lives... dichieweaves them assuredly into a thoughtfully structured
epic
Epic commonly refers to:
* Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation
* Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements
Epic or EPIC may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and medi ...
. The result is a timeless love story steeped in our times."
Tshilidzi Marwala
Tshilidzi Marwala (born 28 July 1971) is a South African artificial intelligence engineer, a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer and a university administrator.
Early life and education
Marwala was born at Duthuni Village in the Limp ...
links the Americanah to the rise of nationalism. In this regard, he thinks the story of Americanah evokes the image that the 21st century will be defined by the dialectical tension between the globalization, which is brought by technology, and the "othering" which is brought by the alienating characteristic of globalization. Accordingly, Marwala on reviewing Americanah states that "it seems that in the 21st century, the strangeness of othering, of enhancing difference rather than embracing our commonalities and the wedging of deep fissures in society continues unabated."
Awards
The book was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the ''
New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
''. It won the 2013
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". and was shortlisted for the 2014
Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...
of the United Kingdom. The ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
's Paperback Best-Seller list. Days after ''The New York Times'' named ''Americanah'' to its best books of 2013 list,
Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...
also signaled her admiration of Adichie, sampling Adichie's
TED Talk
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
"We should all be feminists" on the song " ***Flawless"; sales of ''Americanah'' soared and as of December 23, 2013, the book climbed to the number 179 spot on
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
's list of its 10,000 best-selling books.
Adaptations
In 2014, it was announced that
David Oyelowo
David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo ( ; born 1 April 1976) is a British actor, director and producer. His accolades include a Critics' Choice Award and two NAACP Image Awards as well as nominations for two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, ...
and
Lupita Nyong'o
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (, ; ; born 1 March 1983) is a Kenyan-Mexican actress. She is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Lupita Nyong'o, several accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award, and nominations for ...
would star in a film adaptation of the novel, to be produced by
Brad Pitt
William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. ...
and his production company
Plan B
Plan B typically refers to a contingency plan, a plan devised for an outcome other than in the expected plan.
Plan B may also refer to:
* Plan B, a brand name of levonorgestrel, an emergency contraception drug
Film and television
* Plan B En ...
. In 2018, Nyong'o told ''
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
'' that she was developing a television miniseries based on the book, which she would produce and star in. It was announced on September 13, 2019, that
HBO Max
HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Netw ...
would air the miniseries in ten episodes, with actor and playwright
Danai Gurira
Danai Jekesai Gurira (; born February 14, 1978) is an American-Zimbabwean actress and playwright. She is best known for her starring roles as Michonne on the AMC horror drama series '' The Walking Dead'' (2012–2020, 2022) and as Okoye in the ...
as writer and
showrunner
A showrunner (or colloquially a helmer) is the top-level executive producer of a television series production who has creative and management authority through combining the responsibilities of employer and, in comedy or dramas, typically also th ...
. On October 15, 2020, it was reported that the miniseries would not move forward due to scheduling conflicts.
Scholarly works related to ''Americanah''
*Ojo, Akinleye Ayinuola. Discursive Construction of Sexuality and Sexual Orientations in Chimamanda Adichie's ''Americanah''. ''Ibadan Journal of English Studies'' 7 (2018): 543-560-224.