Linguist Geoff Nunberg designated “tribalism” his 2017 word of the year, and it is a subject that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie revisits in her latest novel Americanah. In her debut, Half of a Yellow Sun, she explored tribalism in the most literal interpretation, setting her story against the backdrop of the Biafran War that frayed associations between the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria’s southeast and the Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani groups traditionally from the west and north. Americanah broadens the definition, bringing both race and immigrant status into the mix but softening the polemical nature of her theme by wrapping it in a standard love story.
Following the paths of young sweethearts Ifemelu and Obinze, Adichie introduces us both to their lives in Nigeria, their homeland, and to their experiences as immigrants in the United States and the United Kingdom. The narrative is not linear, and the first chapter begins near the end of the story, with Ifemelu and Obinze living separate lives on different continents. It is a clever way for Adichie immediately to build tension and lure the reader into the story without revealing too much too soon. Weaving together present moments from the two primary characters’ points of view with their memories of earlier times, she meticulously assembles the backstory of the leads, sketching a full complement of secondary characters along the way.
The narrative center rests with Ifemelu, and the blog she starts after several years in America is the novel’s most obvious vehicle for social commentary. Adichie sprinkles the posts throughout the book, setting them apart with a digital-friendly, sans-serif font, and it is easy to envision the author, who splits her time between Nigeria and the United States, writing each entry in her own blog, if she had one. That both author and character are not American is what makes the blog’s observations so meaningful. The title of the blog, “Understanding America for the Non-American Black,” allows unsympathetic readers to interpret the biting observations as cultural misunderstandings rather than bitterness and resentment. Consequently, instead of immediate, defensive dismissal, enough of the message’s intent might filter through a new lens and positively shade their future interactions with people of other races or nationalities.
Adichie’s critical appraisal of the United States also works because her characters are luckier than they are exceptionally gifted. Although both Obinze and Ifemelu have characteristics that set them apart – Ifemelu at one point mentally describes her difference as “a carapace that kept her safe” – both are recognizable as people any reader might know. Unlike many other tales that reach the popular sphere, neither of these African characters claims royal blood, possesses mystical powers, or commands vast wealth. Nor are they starving or disease-ridden. They are just trying to make sense of life and fashion an existence they enjoy, and, just as for everyone else, that involves some complaints about money, relationships and families. If they were exceptional, adding the layers of race and nationality would seem like a cudgel; making them ordinary and merely lucky allows more subtlety.
Adichie surrenders subtlety with her imagery, though, which is more expansive than in her previous work. Describing a friend of Ifemelu, she writes, “Her jeans left a mound of pulpy flesh above her waist that disfigured her T-shirts, as though something alien were growing underneath.” In Baltimore, “people were hunched in puffy jackets, black and bleak people waiting for buses, the air around them hazed in gloom.” Wherever Adichie takes you, she engages all of your senses. In most cases, the sensory details are woven into the narrative rather than merely standing as sentries to open the scene. This allows awareness to build as the story unfolds, pulling the reader in more deeply.
The pacing of the novel, aided by alternating viewpoints between Ifemelu and Obinze every few chapters, makes it seem shorter than its nearly 600 pages. Given that, Adichie could have included some of the story from the point of view of a pivotal secondary character, Ifemelu’s nephew Dike. Although it was likely a good commercial decision not to include his voice, since publishers think readers are confused by mixing adolescent and adult perspectives and so don’t promote them as heavily (if they publish them at all), Dike shares enough with his aunt that readers know he has more to say. His would be a different kind of outsider viewpoint than either Ifemelu’s or Obinze’s and would add texture, much like the chapters dedicated to Ugwu did in Half of a Yellow Sun.
Overall, Americanah is a worthy addition to a long tradition of using novels to elucidate inequality. Using the viewpoint of an immigrant is not new, but including a blog adds another layer while also placing the theme in the modern world. Adichie’s writing, already strong in her debut novel, is only improving. We are lucky that she is relatively young and still seems to have a lot to say.
* Special thanks to Tami Haaland, whose writing workshop resulted in this review, to Jahnavi Bhagwati for introducing me to the author’s amazing work in the first place, and to Beth Morrow for encouraging me not to stop with Half of a Yellow Sun.
* Photo credit: Sarah Mirk.