A review by vgp
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

emotional informative reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I think this is a necessary book to understand racism in it’s multiple forms, many subtle to those not suffering it. Black hair as an example of my ignorance and as a example pf how deep is the believe system set around race.
I loved the account of migration stories to the States and to Britain. Feeling like an outsider everywhere, struggling with the cultural nuisances. And then, the stories of being pushed to the limits of a person until it breaks.
I could not relate and got a bit bored with some of the parts of the life in Lagos, but that’s just one side of all those that compose the life of Ifemelu.

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Some quotes:
  • “she had not had a bold epiphany […] it was simply that layer after layer of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her”.
  • “what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was the right size.”
  • “It’s a bit tiresome to talk about America as being insular, […] since if something major happens [there] it is the headline in Britain; something major happens here, it is on the back page in America”.
  • “countries in Europe were based on exclusion and not, as in America, on inclusion.”
  • “the other guests […] understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people […] conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things […] to leave”.
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