Americanah is a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who also wrote We Should All Be Feminists. I decided to pick it up between White Fragility and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, as I was looking for a related fiction piece to read. Since I started it, I had a hard time putting it down.
Without giving away too much, the story centres around two teens in Nigeria that fall in love, and have their relationship tested when one of them moves to the America. The other ends up moving to London, England, and for the first time, they both experience racism and learn what it means to be Black in western society.
The story outlines the struggles that they both face to secure financial independence, and how they come to terms with the fact that everything they read about in novels as kids simply wasn’t true. All of their childhood and teenhood, they and their friends dream about “moving abroad” and “having a better life,” and their parents want that for them more than anything.
After a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, these two lovebirds end up back in Nigeria, in search of a real feeling of home. It’s been written and spoken about many times; too foreign for the west, and too foreign for home upon return. Although their experiences have changed them, they are proud to be Nigerian at last.
If you’re looking for something that will make you laugh, cry, and marvel in the beauty of the diction, you’ll want to pick this book up.
Khadijah Plummer Consulting 