Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah
“Ouch! Ouch, Chimanda! Stop!”
(Oh wait.)
Don’t stop.
It’s me who can’t stop. I read everything Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes. I only started reading her by accident, when I was facilitating the Kuwait Book Club I never intended to belong to, and found myself reading so many books by authors I had never heard of. We were reading Half Of a Yellow Sun and all of a sudden, I WAS Nigerian. She can do that. She uses the senses, she uses the thoughts in our head. We are really not so alien, us and the Nigerians I start to think. I have Nigerian friends, from the church. We all get along. We have a good time together.
“Not so fast!” Chimamanda tells me in Americanah, her newest book, which I put off buying until I could find it in paperback. “You are very different! You think differently! And growing up in a country where there are black and white, race becomes an issue that it is not when you are black, and everyone is black, and you are growing up in Nigeria.”
Hmmm. OK. That makes sense. I mean, I thought I was Nigerian because in Half of a Yellow Sun, I was Igbo, living in an academic community in Nigeria, and hmmmm. You’re right, Chimamanda, there were no white people around. Just us Nigerians.
Chimamanda, with her sharp, all-seeing eyes, her sharp ears and her sharp tongue make me cringe as she comes to the USA and comes up against assumptions many have about Africa. Do you even know where, exactly, Nigeria is? Do you know where Ghana is? Most Americans can find Egypt on a map of Africa, and MAYBE South Africa, but the rest is . . . mostly guesswork. Because we send clothing and food aid to African countries, we have the idea that all Africans are poor, but that is not so, and is insulting to the middle-class and upper class Africans who travel elsewhere for leisure – and education.
I don’t know how much of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book is autobiographical and how much is fiction. I know that her observations are acute, she nails expat friendships, she spotlights our blind spots and hypocricies, and she holds you in her grip because she is no less harsh with herself – if, indeed, her Ifemelu, the main character in Americanah, is reflecting Chimamanda’s own experience. The experiences, coming here, the overwhelming differences in manners and customs, even volume of voice and width of hand expression, are so immediate, so compelling, so well described that they have to have been experiences she herself had, and had the eyes to see. She must have taken notes, because she totally nails the expat experience.
Book ads and book reviews focus on Americanah as a book about being black in America, and it truly is that – as seen from the eyes of a non-American black, as she often reminds us.
She is hard on herself, returning to Nigeria, and quick to note that much of the change is in herself and her changed perspective. While I love the romantic storyline, I was disappointed by the fantasy ending, given how self-disciplined Adichie is at keeping it real in every other facet of the novel. On the other hand, I am still trying to think of an ending that would work for me, and I can’t. While her ending wraps it all up neatly, it’s the one part of the book where her sharpness dulls.
One of the things I liked best about the book was going behind the scenes, being Nigerian, going to school, having coffee, working, going to parties with other Nigerians, chatting with my girlfriends. We’ve done things with nationals of different countries before, but you know as soon as you walk in that your presence changes things. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie takes me with her and no one knows I am there, observing, learning, figuring out how things are done when it’s “just us” Nigerians.
Here’s why I am a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addict. She keeps it real. She has eyes that see, and ears that hear, and a gift for capturing what she sees and hears and a gift for writing it down. She has insight, into herself, into others, into character and motivations. She is sophisticated and unpretentious, she admires and she mocks, but when she mocks, it is as likely to be self-mockery as mockery of another person, class, ethnicity or nation. Reading Adichie, I understand our similarities – and our differences. I believe she would be a prickly friend to have, but I would chose her as a friend.
Awards
● Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
● One of The New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year
● Winner of the The Chicago Tribune 2013 Heartland Prize for Fiction
● An NPR “Great Reads” Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle
Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick.
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I discovered her in my MA class – Purple Hibiscus was one of the first books we had to read for class. We were supposed to read like writers and not like readers. So we had to look with a judgemental eye at why she made the choices she did as an author. I think she’s fantastic.
Did you hear her TED talk? I think it’s titled THE ONE STORY. Or something like that. It opened my eyes, especially as a mother who needs to pick and choose books and even songs for her child. It made me think about the Mr Sun son. You know the Mr Sun, Sun, Mr Golden Sun, Please Shine Down On Me song? Well now, a lot of Kuwaiti kids are singing that which doesn’t make any sense at all considering that we get more than our fair share of sunlight. LOOL! On the other hand, there’s a Kuwaiti song, from when I was really young that basically says “Rain Come Down, Rain Come Down, Our House is New..” and so on. THAT song made sense for us but since we’re becoming increasingly Westernised we’re singing songs that invite the sun when we have 50 C weather. 🙂
Oh! I’m so glad we share a love of this author! I find her cheeky – and insightful. Her observations are sometimes painful, but she is no less hard on herself and her own society. I think I’ve read everything she published. And I never would have known her were it not for the Kuwait Book Club I was part of. 🙂
I DID hear her TED talk, and I have heard her interviewed on NPR and BBC. What a confident woman!
LOL at the rain song, I remember hearing it in Oman, Matar matar matar . . . 🙂 I laugh, too, at the songs we teach our young, and as I hear my grandson sing, I realize that a lot of them are really not about what they appear to be about, but about helping little ones learn to follow instructions.
It makes me sad for kids who don’t get this training early – there are so many things kids know that they don’t even know they know, and it helps in school: get in line, raise your hand if you want to talk, listen to the teacher, sit down . . . and it takes a while to teach them all this! It has to start young, or they are behind before they ever get in a real classroom! Aaargh!
Huh that’s interesting. I’m trying to think of which songs have hidden instructions and I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I know they teach body movements (“Put your right hand in, put your right hand out”) and some teach numbers “One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive”). But there aren’t any that I know that speak about manners or give school related instructions. I use books for that though. My favourite are the ones that have a “What Do You Say?” page at the end of an action. My son’s Little Book Of Manners book has a page that only says “You Burped” on it with a little boy with his hand on his mouth. Next page says “What do you say?” and if you flip the page it says “Excuse Me!” LOL Love it!
By the way, when it comes to useful nursery rhymes, you should consider yourself very lucky as a mother from an English speaking background. We have lots of nice songs for kids but they just don’t have the educational value. I really wanted to only speak to my son in Arabic but it would mean he would be missing out on so many good books and nursery rhymes. So now I mix Arabic and English which isn’t ideal but inshala ultimately he’ll speak both of them well. Or so I pray! 🙂
There are some wonderful Saudi books written, one of which titled The Son of a Duck is a Floater, and another has to do with Apricots . . . they are translations from Arabic to English, and are delightful! I always loved the Arabic quotes, the traditions, one of which I remember has to do with ‘al ein hamra’ but means check your facts before you jump to conclusions, and the quote from the prophet Mohammed about leaving a third of your stomach empty when you eat (!) great advice for all us fat Americans!