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A review by xtinaji
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4.0
★ ★ ★ ★/5 Stars.
I finished reading Americanah on a rainy morning, just before dawn. The world outside was still blue and shadowed, and the shape of buildings slowly emerged from the dark, brick by brick, pane by pane, as the sky lightened. The sound of toads and birds rose up from the twilight silence, their throats defrosted and open with warbling calls upon waking.
To be honest, I already knew what I was going to rate this book around the halfway mark. I had high expectations when I picked up this novel, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivers on everything the back blurb promises — a star-crossed romance focused on race and identity and love. There’s a refreshing frankness to her prose that I have found to be my favorite part of contemporary literature, and Adichie does well to hone in on her elegant, clean writing in a way that does not still provides exceptional depth and insight. A few of my favorite lines are:
“There was a moment, a caving of the blue sky, an inertia of stillness…”
“This was truly her; this was the voice with which she would speak if she were woken up from a deep sleep during an earthquake”
“…Kimberly’s repeated apologies were tinged with self-indulgence, as though she believed that she could, with apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world.”
Adichie intersperses critical insight between the lines of prose, and these observations are the core of the novel. The book is split into 6 parts, and we follow Ifemelu and Obinze from their instant attraction and young love to the turmoils they both encounter as immigrants in foreign countries.
Adichie does an incredibly job at weaving in characters, themes, and identities to create a sprawling story across seas. Ifemelu’s argument that as a blogger, she wants to observe rather than to educate is what I found to be at the core of the novel’s approach. This book will not give you answers; it won’t tell you the solutions to micro-aggressions or even how to go about being a great ally or activist (even our educated Yale boy Blaine is seen through Ifemelu’s eyes as patronizing more often than not). And yet, reading this book through the eyes of an African woman and man, can lend us here in the states more clarity towards the biases and inherent privilege we engage in, such as even well meaning acts of assistance or charity. It gives the book a sense that there is no one answer. In depicting these scenarios for what they are, through characters who experience racial prejudice but are in many ways historically distant from the situation, Adichie doesn’t need to argue a specific point—she shows us that we need to find these conclusions for ourselves. While I do agree that the book, particular the second half, becomes preachy without plot (and, admittedly, boring and drawn out towards the end), I believe Adichie’s talent in cultivating a story of this scale and nuance to be commendable. To conclude, I am wowed and intimidated by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters, her writing prowess, and the scope of her stories.
Read my full review and analysis here: https://www.christinaji.com/all-posts/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie
Follow my bookstagram: @mytholoji
I finished reading Americanah on a rainy morning, just before dawn. The world outside was still blue and shadowed, and the shape of buildings slowly emerged from the dark, brick by brick, pane by pane, as the sky lightened. The sound of toads and birds rose up from the twilight silence, their throats defrosted and open with warbling calls upon waking.
To be honest, I already knew what I was going to rate this book around the halfway mark. I had high expectations when I picked up this novel, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivers on everything the back blurb promises — a star-crossed romance focused on race and identity and love. There’s a refreshing frankness to her prose that I have found to be my favorite part of contemporary literature, and Adichie does well to hone in on her elegant, clean writing in a way that does not still provides exceptional depth and insight. A few of my favorite lines are:
“There was a moment, a caving of the blue sky, an inertia of stillness…”
“This was truly her; this was the voice with which she would speak if she were woken up from a deep sleep during an earthquake”
“…Kimberly’s repeated apologies were tinged with self-indulgence, as though she believed that she could, with apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world.”
Adichie intersperses critical insight between the lines of prose, and these observations are the core of the novel. The book is split into 6 parts, and we follow Ifemelu and Obinze from their instant attraction and young love to the turmoils they both encounter as immigrants in foreign countries.
Adichie does an incredibly job at weaving in characters, themes, and identities to create a sprawling story across seas. Ifemelu’s argument that as a blogger, she wants to observe rather than to educate is what I found to be at the core of the novel’s approach. This book will not give you answers; it won’t tell you the solutions to micro-aggressions or even how to go about being a great ally or activist (even our educated Yale boy Blaine is seen through Ifemelu’s eyes as patronizing more often than not). And yet, reading this book through the eyes of an African woman and man, can lend us here in the states more clarity towards the biases and inherent privilege we engage in, such as even well meaning acts of assistance or charity. It gives the book a sense that there is no one answer. In depicting these scenarios for what they are, through characters who experience racial prejudice but are in many ways historically distant from the situation, Adichie doesn’t need to argue a specific point—she shows us that we need to find these conclusions for ourselves. While I do agree that the book, particular the second half, becomes preachy without plot (and, admittedly, boring and drawn out towards the end), I believe Adichie’s talent in cultivating a story of this scale and nuance to be commendable. To conclude, I am wowed and intimidated by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters, her writing prowess, and the scope of her stories.
Read my full review and analysis here: https://www.christinaji.com/all-posts/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie
Follow my bookstagram: @mytholoji