![]() ![]() Strapped for cash, she'll take on degrading jobs she'd never imagined doing. In America, a woman who "had spoken English all her life" will conscientiously develop an American accent so that she can be understood. We also spend a promising but underdeveloped section with Obinze in England, from which he is eventually deported as an illegal immigrant.īut the heart of Adichie's book lies elsewhere, within the country folded into its title - the word Nigerians use for those compatriots who have been to the States and never fully return home. ![]() "Americanah" spends many early pages retracing Ifemelu's Nigerian childhood, returning to Nigeria at journey's end these sections revolve around the on-again, off-again relationship between Ifemelu and Obinze, her teenage love from Nigeria. ![]() Ifemelu will learn this for herself in the years to come - even as she resists the pull of a country where people continually "smooth all the scalloped surfaces." ![]() You do what you have to do if you want to succeed." Early in "Americanah," Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's first novel in seven years, a newly arrived Nigerian college student and her Nigerian aunt are chatting in the aunt's Brooklyn apartment.Įxplaining why she'll straighten her hair for upcoming interviews, Aunty Uju gets right to the point: "You are in a country that is not your own. ![]()
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