Writing An Honest Novel
About Race
An Analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
22-6-2015
Sanne Janssen 3841723
Bachelor Thesis English Language and Culture
Drs. Simon Cook: Supervisor
Dr. Cathelein Aaftink: Second Reader
6017 words (incl. quotations)
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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3
Chapter 1 African American Literature...................................................................................... 4
Chapter 2 Race and Gender ........................................................................................................ 6
Postcolonial Theory ................................................................................................................ 6
Gender Theory ........................................................................................................................ 8
Chapter 3 “You Can’t Write an Honest Novel About Race in This Country”......................... 12
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 20
Works Cited.............................................................................................................................. 22
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Introduction
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes in her 2013 novel Americanah: “You can’t write an
honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by
race, it’ll be too obvious” (335). Americanah, however, is a novel full of social commentary
on race and how it affects the lives of black immigrants, especially female immigrants.
Adichie is aware of how race and gender work alongside each other and shape someone’s
experience. The main protagonist of the story, Ifemelu constantly points this out. Since
Americanah is a relatively new novel, hardly any academic articles have been written about it.
The article “Fictional Representations of Contemporary Diasporas: The Case of the Invisible
Diasporic Women of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” by Claudio Braga and R. Gonçalves
analyses diaspora in Adichie’s works, including Americanah, and Serena Guarracino’s
“Writing «so Raw and True»: Blogging in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah”
analyses the way Internet and blogging attributes to the novel. Several reviews have been
written about Americanah, all commenting on the aspects of race in the story. The
Washington Post writes: “Race entraps, beguiles and bewilders [Ifemelu] because it’s an
imaginary construct with actual consequences. [. . .] But beyond race, the book is about the
immigrant’s quest: self-invention, which is the American subject” (Raboteau). However, no
academic articles have been written about the novel. This thesis will argue that Americanah
offers an outside perspective on what it means to be black in America and therefore
contributes to understanding the notion of race and gender in African American literature. The
first chapter will describe African American literature and the role of race and gender. The
second chapter will explain postcolonial and gender theory, which can be used to analyse race
and gender respectively. The third chapter will apply these theories to analyse Americanah.
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Chapter 1
African American Literature
African American literature has been defined in various ways. One way literature is
considered to be African American is “whenever [it] feature[s] African American characters
alongside certain historical themes, cultural geographies, political discourses, or perspectives
defined by race” (Jarret 1). Erika Swarts Gray gives another definition to African American
literature: “literature that is written by African American writers or includes African
American characters that are culturally specific” (472). She further argues in her article that
one of the most important characteristics of African American literature is that it makes black
characters visible and allows black readers to connect to the main characters. She writes that
students feel that literature that is read in the classroom features too few African American
characters, or that it presents the history of slavery “without including any ‘nonslavery’ or
modern representations” (476). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also noticed the lack of black
characters in modern literature when she was little. She wrote stories based on the novels that
she was reading, and she says: “All my characters were white and had blue eyes and played in
the snow and ate apples and had dogs called Socks” (“African ‘Authenticity’ and the Biafran
Experience” 42). When she read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, she first encountered
black characters, characters with whom she could identify: “Here were characters who had
Igbo names and ate yams and inhabited a world similar to mine. Okonkwo and Ezinma and
Ikemefuna taught me that my world was worthy of literature, that books could also have
people like me in them” (42). However, she noticed that once she moved to America, people
expected her to be like the characters in Things Fall Apart, poor and exotic. They also
imagined Africa as a place without electricity, modern music and modern clothes. The
African or African American characters in the stories she read were in fact without modern
representations:
Some of the books I read as a child such as those by Rider Haggard dehumanized
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Africans. All the Africans in those books were spectacularly simple, if not stupid. The
adults were like children who needed a Westerner to teach them everything; they were
uncivilized; or they were dark and inscrutable and dangerous in the way that wild
animals are. I loved many of those books. I simply didn't get that they were supposed
to be about me. I did not, of course, identify with any of these African characters. (44)
It is important, then, to portray black characters in a realistic way in order to be able to
identify with them. Adichie also adds: “There are many other examples. Africans become
dispensable; Africans don't matter, not even in narratives ostensibly about Africa. The old
stereotypes are repeated, feeding on one another and self-perpetuating in the many other
books that have been written about Africa since” (44). These stereotypes are often racist and
sexist in nature. Black men are portrayed as dumb, lazy and violent, while black women are
portrayed as exotic and sexual. It can therefore be said that African American literature is
literature, written by or featuring African Americans, that tries to battle these stereotypes and
show the experiences of black people in American society. As Aimable Twagilimana argues,
black women writers battle two types of discrimination: “Black women writers, who have to
deal with the affliction of both racism and sexism, use traditional strategies to undo this
double reduction. They strive to invent a new language to talk about their experience and their
lives as black and women” (Twagilimana 4). Adichie, therefore, aims to battle stereotypes
about black female immigrants to show the realistic experience of these women. Americanah,
however, is a novel written by a Nigerian woman about the experience of a fictional Nigerian
woman. It cannot be called African American literature, but by writing about race and gender
in America, it offers an outside perspective on these matters. This outside perspective will be
shown when analysing the novel with the help of postcolonial and gender theory.
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Chapter 2
Race and Gender
Postcolonial Theory
Postcolonial theory emerged in the 1980 in the fields of literary and cultural studies
(Cervinkova 159). The term postcolonial refers to “all the culture affected by the imperial
process from the moment of colonization to the present day” (Ashcroft et al. 2). This chapter
will first explore how colonialism emerged from a set of beliefs that persist in today’s society
and how they were used to justify colonialism. In Americanah, Ifemelu encounters these
beliefs once she is in America and discovers that her black skin is seen as inferior to white
skin. “When you make the choice to come to America, you become black” (Americanah 220),
she says on her blog, implying that her skin colour only became an issue when she left
Nigeria. The chapter will go on to explore the notion of diaspora and hybridity, which is
valuable theory for the close reading because Ifemelu lives in the Nigerian diaspora and this
has effects on her identity and her way of thinking.
Colonialism was largely determined by military power, but it could not have
functioned without a widespread set of beliefs that justified the occupation of other peoples’
land and ruling over other people (McLeod 44). Edward Said’s Orientalism elucidates these
beliefs. Said argues that the world draws a binary distinction between the Orient and the
Occident, or the West (49). The Orient is often described in negative terms “that serve to
buttress a sense of the West’s superiority and strength” (49). A few examples of these
negative terms will be given. The Orient is seen as timeless, and henceforth regarded as
primitive or backwards (52). It is believed to be cut off from the growth and progress of
Western society. The Orient is also seen as strange, fantastic, bizarre, a place of mysticism
that is the direct opposite of the West’s rationality and familiarity (53). Thirdly, the West
represents people from the Orient in certain stereotypes, for example violent Arabs and lazy
Indians. These stereotype derive from the belief that race or nationality determines the
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character of a person (53). Furthermore, it was believed that these people were typically
untrustworthy and lacked moral compass, which made them more inclined to violent
behaviour (55). From this logic, it followed that Oriental people needed to be civilised by
Western people in order to be saved from themselves (55). It is important to note here that
race is a social construction and not a biological given. McLeod gives the example that people
with different eye colours are not thought of as fundamentally different, and eye colour is just
as biologically determined as someone’s skin colour (132). Racism sprouts from this idea and
refers to “the ideology that upholds the discrimination against certain people on the grounds
of perceived racial difference and claims these constructions of racial identity are true or
natural” (132). As Adichie herself puts it: “Racism, the idea of the black race as inferior to the
white race, and even the construction of race itself as a biological and social reality, was of
course used by Western Europeans to justify slavery and later to justify colonialism”
(“African Authenticity and the ‘Biafran’ Experience” 43).
One of the important areas within postcolonial theory is the study of diaspora and
diasporic identities, which Adichie pays close attention to in several of her works. She
particularly writes about the “embodied experiences of female characters in Nigeria and the
Nigerian diaspora” (Hewett 81). Diaspora, which refers to the “movement and relocation of
groups of different kinds of peoples throughout the world” (McLeod 236), carries with it the
notion of not belonging to the new country, of always feeling excluded or left out. Even if the
person in question is born in the new country, they can still feel emotional and cultural ties to
the nation their parents or grandparents were born in (237). This keeps them from feeling as if
they truly belong in the new country, also because “diaspora peoples often remain ghettoised
[. . .] and suffer their cultural practices to be mocked and discriminated against” (239).
However, people living in the diaspora do not belong to their home country either. Their
notion of ‘home’ is that of an imaginary homeland built on incomplete images and memories
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from the past, an unstable mental construct (243). These people, then, occupy “a displaced
position, dislocated from a past homeland that can only ever be imperfectly imagined but not
fully grounded in their present location or residence” (244). Displacement, according to
Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, is one of the primary features of postcolonial literatures (8).
The concept of hybridity is related to this displacement. When one is living in a diaspora, his
or her identity is composed from many locations, a myriad of sources. In other words,
diaspora identities are not “pure” (McLeod 253). This hybridity serves as “a way of thinking
beyond exclusionary, fixed, binary notions of identity based on ideas of rootedness and
cultural, racial and national purity” (254). These people do not have “secure roots which fix
[them] in a place, in a nation or ethnic group; rather [they] must continually plot for
[themselves] itinerant cultural routes which take [them], imaginatively as well as physically,
to many places and into contact with many different peoples” (249). Their identity is
henceforth not fixed, but always open to re-inscription.
In postcolonial theory, it is possible to reflect on the experiences of immigrants
concerning race and identity. However, one aspect that is also highly important when thinking
about identity is gender. The experiences of female and male immigrants are undoubtedly
different from each other. Postcolonial theory takes gender into account, but some feminist
critics argue that it is still treated as being of less importance than the category of race (197).
However, as the next chapter will show, identity is shaped by both race and gender and both
black and western feminists make use of this knowledge.
Gender Theory
Americanah is a feminist novel, which is why it is important to analyse it with the use
of gender theory. Adichie says in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “I wanted
Ifemelu to be a character who wasn't easy to like [. . .] I think it's a very feminist book — I
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think all of my work is very feminist. She just refuses to keep quiet. In a way that in my life I
think I refuse to as well” (Kellogg). Feminism is a broad concept, which makes it difficult to
give it a specific definition. However, the following definition tries to encapsulate the general
thought, which is that feminism is “a set of ideas that recognize in an explicit way that women
are subordinate to men and seek to address imbalances of power between the sexes. At its
heart is the view that women’s condition is socially constructed, and therefore open to
change” (McLeod 198). Feminists try to tackle the assumption that certain stereotypical
gender roles are true or biologically determined. It is important to define gender here. Gender
is often divided from sex in the sense that sex is a biological category, but gender is socially
constructed, just like race. Feminists have argued that one is not born a woman, but made a
woman, because from birth, it is already decided what kind of clothes they should wear and
how they should behave (Buikema 35). As Adichie states in her TED talk: “The problem with
gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are” (We
Should All Be Feminists). This is also visible in Americanah, because Ifemelu is a woman
who voices her strong opinions, something that is not always appreciated in Western society.
Feminist also argue that this social construction is due to the fact that we live in a
patriarchal society. Patriarchy refers to “those systems – political, material and imaginative –
which invest power in men and marginalise women” (McLeod 199). The patriarchy “asserts
certain representational systems which create an order of the world presented to individuals as
‘normal’ or ‘true’” (McLeod 199). Not unlike colonialism, patriarchy and resistance to it is a
question of power and the way those not in power are represented. Women suffered from a
double colonisation, a phrase used by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, which
means that women experienced the effects of colonialism and patriarchy simultaneously
(201). It is argued that colonialism celebrates male victory, “while women are subject to
representation in colonial discourses in ways which collude with patriarchal values” (201).
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For women in the Third World, the colonised countries, Western patriarchy had a huge effect
on gender roles. Colonialism “interrupted indigenous familial and community structures and
imposed its own models instead” (203), which means that female organisation based upon
kinship structures that gave power to women were disrupted, because they were not modelled
on family structures. The indigenous gender roles may have been more egalitarian than the
gender roles and stereotypes imported by the colonising nation, but their “established
traditions, customs and social systems were irreparably broken, sometimes to the detriment of
women” (203).
Feminism comes in waves. The third wave is important for the reading of Americanah,
because Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie can be called a third-wave feminist. In her TED Talk
We Should All Be Feminists, she embraces her femininity, saying that she loves make-up and
dresses. She states to be in favour of the equality of the sexes, just as “third‐wavers feel
entitled to interact with men as equals, claim sexual pleasure as they desire it (heterosexual or
otherwise), and actively play with femininity” (Snyder 179). She also discards the notion of
one category of ‘women’, but instead acknowledges differences between women. This is
something that third-wave feminists aim to do: “[they] rightly reject the universalist claim that
all women share a set of common experiences, but they do not discard the concept of
experience altogether. Women still look to personal experiences to provide knowledge about
how the world operates and to trouble dominant narratives about how things should be” (184).
This way of including every woman, black or white, within feminism, is called
intersectionality. The term was first coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a white feminist,
but the general line of thought was already used by black feminists (Buikema 72).
Intersectionality is a way of thinking how identity is based on different axes of meaning, such
as gender, age, ethnicity, class, sexuality and nationality (72). Within intersectionality, gender
is not the most important factor of someone’s identity, as is often argued within feminism, but
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it works alongside other factors. All these factors combined determine someone’s position,
and oppression, in society. Intersectionality is therefore the idea that the axes of meaning like
race and gender, “by which we are assigned a social position, are interdependent, interwoven
systems of ideas and practices with regard to differences between people” (Wekker 24).
Black feminists argue that gender is inseparably linked and even determined by racial
identity (James et al. 17). The black feminist movement has aimed to combine to fight against
sexism with the fight against racism since the early-twentieth-century, but gained ground in
the civil rights movement in the 1960s and early 1970s (17). An example of why it was
necessary to draw attention to gender and race is seen in court cases such as DeGraffenreid v
General Motors. Five black women claimed that the company General Motors discriminated
against black women, but the court ruled that black women deserved no special status as
distinct from black men (Crenshaw 59). “The court’s refusal in DeGraffenreid to
acknowledge that Black women encounter combined race and sex discrimination implies that
the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white
women’s and Black men’s experiences” (59). Therefore, black feminism aims to reconstruct
“the lived experiences, historical positioning, cultural perceptions and social construction of
Black women who are enmeshed in and whose ideas emerge out of that experience” and
develop “a feminism rooted in class, culture, gender and race in interaction as its organizing
principle” (James et al. 16). This intersectional approach will be taken in the close reading of
Americanah.
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Chapter 3
“You Can’t Write an Honest Novel About Race in This Country”
The protagonist in Americanah, Ifemelu, leaves Nigeria to study at a school in Philadelphia.
In Nigeria, she is privileged; she comes from a wealthy middle-class family and attends
college. As someone later in America says to her, she is a “bourgie Nigerian” (Americanah
177), part of the upper class. This changes when she moves to America. She suddenly belongs
to the under-privileged group, because of her skin colour and because she is not as wealthy as
she used to be. She encounters racism during her stay in America, something that she never
was aware of in Nigeria. This chapter will explore the white privilege of Ifemelu’s boss and
her friends, Ifemelu’s relationship with a white man, her blog and her identity and hybridity.
Whiteness and White Privilege
Ifemelu’s first job in America is babysitting the two children of Kimberley, a rich
white woman. When she first meets her, Kimberley says: “What a beautiful name [. . .] Does
it mean anything? I love multicultural names because they have such wonderful meanings,
from wonderful rich cultures” (Americanah 146). She is implying here that she associates
culture with foreignness, and she does not consider white culture to be a culture. Culture,
then, is always associated with race. As Richard Dyer argues: “At the level of racial
presentation, in other words, whites are not of a certain race, they’re just the human race” (3).
However, he also argues that race can be applied to white people as well, and that white
people will always function as a human norm if they are not racially recognised (1).
Kimberley, then, is well-meaning, but she treats black people differently than white people,
thereby still, although unintentionally, establishing white people as the norm. She calls every
black woman beautiful, until Ifemelu points out: “No, she isn’t [. . .] You know, you can just
say ‘black’. Not every black person is beautiful” (Americanah 147). Kimberley feels the need
to constantly assure black people that they matter or to apologise for the thoughtless
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comments about race from her sister Laura, because she believes “that she could, with
apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world” (163).
Kimberley’s friends think about African woman in the same manner as Kimberley. At
a party in Kimberley’s home, a man tells Ifemelu that she is beautiful, that all African women
are beautiful, “especially Ethiopians” (169). All the people at the party are involved in
charities in African countries and want to include African staff because they do not want to be
“the NGO that won’t use local labour” (169). Ifemelu is invited to come work for them when
she is back in Africa, even though the NGO is located in Ghana and Ifemelu could not be
considered a local woman. The problem is that they think Africa is in need of saving by the
West, an Oriental and imperial assumption; Kimberley’s friend do not see that they are part of
the problem as well. Robert Jensen attributes this blindness to white privilege in his book The
Heart of Whiteness: “That’s part of white privilege – the privilege to ignore the reality of a
white-supremacist society [. . .], to deny one’s own role in it. It is the privilege of remaining
ignorant because that ignorance is protected” (10). He also argues that, because of this
ignorance, white people may become upset or angry when they are called out at racist
remarks, something of which they are unaware. This is shown when Ifemelu calls out Laura,
who says that the African doctor that she knows is more professional than the African
American doctors. Ifemelu replies: “I just think it’s a simplistic comparison to make. You
need to understand a bit more history” (Americanah 168). Laura storms off and ignores
Ifemelu at the party the next day, not wanting to face the fact that perhaps race is a more
complicated issue than she thinks.
Dating an American Non-Black
Ifemelu starts dating Curt, the uncle of the children that she babysits. He is a white
man, who is seen by his mother as “her adventurer who would bring back exotic species – he
had dated a Japanese girl, a Venezuelan girl [. . .]” (Americanah 198), but Ifemelu is the first
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black girl that he has dated. Curt appears to be, for a part at least, only interested in Ifemelu
because she is African. He likes her supposed exoticness, which shows that he also thinks in
some of the Orientalist stereotypes. He disapproves of Ifemelu straightening her hair because
she thinks it will improve her chances of getting a job. He says: “Why do you have to do this?
Your hair was gorgeous braided. And when you took out the braids the last time and just kind
of let it be? It was even more gorgeous, so full and cool” (204). Adichie herself says: “Africa
has for the past two years or so been very fashionable in the United States and Europe, and
this new ‘afro fashion’ is based in part on the stereotype of the poor starving African in need
of salvation by the West” (“African ‘Authenticity’ and the Biafran Experience” 44). Curt also
wants to save Ifemelu in some way. Ifemelu has been looking for a job but is unable to find
one, until Curt surprises her with the news that he has arranged an interview at an office in
Baltimore for her. She is glad, but feels “in the midst of her gratitude, a small resentment: that
Curt could, with a few calls, rearrange the world, have things slide into the spaces that he
wanted them to” (Americanah 202). Curt is able to arrange and achieve things that would
have taken Ifemelu more time and effort, because he is white privileged.
When they tell the children whom Ifemelu babysits about their relationship, the oldest
child, Morgan, says that it disgusts her. Morgan is not the only one who finds it hard to
understand why a white man would date a black woman. It reminds Ifemelu of a guy in her
ethnics class and of Kimberley’s husband: “Don thought she was attractive and interesting,
and thought Curt was attractive and interesting, but it did not occur to him to think of both of
them, together, entangled in the delicate threads of romance” (195). Tensions formed in their
relationship because of race. People stare when they are walking across the street, holding
hands. When they arrive at a restaurant, a waiter asks Curt if he wants a table for one, as if
Ifemelu is not there. Sometimes Curt stands up for Ifemelu, but other times he fails to see that
race is an issue. He is ignorant about some race matters because he is white. As Ifemelu later
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writes in a blog post titled “What Academics Mean By White Privilege, or Yes It Sucks to be
Poor and White but Try Being Poor and Non-White”: “That is exactly what white privilege is.
[. . .] Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier” (346). Race comes
to stand between Curt and Ifemelu and is the primary reason they break up. However, Ifemelu
also cheats on Curt for no apparent reason. Ifemelu’s character received critique from readers
because she was supposedly not grateful to have a good man. Adichie argues that Ifemelu
does not have to be grateful: “Do we have the same standards for men? We don't. So she
cheats on a good man for no reason. And she's crucified for it, but if we turned it around and
she were male …” (Brockes; original ellipses). Ifemelu defies gender stereotypes in more than
one way in Americanah: by voicing her strong opinion and not considering having a
boyfriend as something to be grateful about.
Blogging as a Non-American Black
An important part of the novel is Ifemelu’s blog, “Raceteenth or Various Observations About
American Blacks (Those Formerly Known As Negroes) by a Non-American Black”, of which
various posts follow chapters throughout the novel. The posts range from subject as Michelle
Obama and WASPS, to American tribalism and hair products. The blog quickly becomes
successful, receiving comments and even donations. Ifemelu is invited to speak at various
events and being paid for it. The blog helps her to make a living, to become successful.
Ifemelu’s racial awareness is the main subject of the blog: “Without creating any hierarchies,
blog writing is enfolded in the novel, hosting most – if not all – social commentary”
(Guarracino 14). The blog functions as a way of giving direct critique to matters of race,
without being disguised as fiction. Ifemelu is able to write her blog because she is an outsider.
She is African, not African American, which gives her a certain privilege. Shan, an African
American girl in the novel, says about Ifemelu: “‘She’s writing from the outside. She doesn’t
really feel all the stuff she’s writing about. It’s all quaint and curious to her. So she can write
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it and get all these accolades and get invited to give talks. If she were African American,
she’d just be labelled angry and shunned’” (Americanah 336). The novel also depicts a certain
tension between Africans and African Americans. Before Ifemelu came to America, race
never existed for her. It had never been a barrier in Nigeria, and only when it became a
barrier, she noticed its existence. She grows to be very conscious of race and makes a living
writing about it, but she is not burdened by America’s racial history in the same manner as
African Americans. Ifemelu is seen by her African American friends as “not sufficiently
furious because she [is] African, not African American” (345). Much like Ifemelu is able to
write about race because of her origin, Adichie is able to write Americanah. She is able to
observe and write about race because she knows what it is like to be treated differently
because of her skin colour without it being complicated by her being African American.
Adichie herself says: “[T]here is a certain privilege in my position as somebody who is not an
American, who is looking in from the outside. When I came to the U.S., I became fascinated
by the many permutations of race, especially of blackness, the identity I was assigned in
America. I still am fascinated” (Williams). Her outside perspective unravels race as a social
construct, not a universal truth. The blog posts not only invite the reader to join the
conversation about race, but they also open that same conversation. The novel sheds a new
light on the way race is treated in America, because it often remains ignored in American
society.
Identity and Hybridity
Her blog also helps to shape Ifemelu’s identity. According to Elias and Lemish, the internet
plays “a variety of roles in the immigrants’ lives, in keeping with the diversity and dynamics
of the ongoing adjustment to a new society and maintenance of their original cultural identity”
(535). Ifemelu uses her blog to adjust to American society, and to make a career for herself.
She also maintains her original cultural identity through the blog, posting about the hair
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products she uses and the way she dries her hair to celebrate its natural kinkiness. She comes
to celebrate her cultural heritage and her femininity. She uses her blog to interact with her
readers, frequently asking for their experiences or opinions and receiving feedback from
them. Elias and Lemish argue that this interaction contributes to the immigrant’s social
empowerment: “The [I]nternet [serves] as a forum for public discourse on issues related to
immigrants’ painful experiences, usually excluded from the mainstream [. . .] media, thus
contributing to the immigrants’ empowerment” (535). They argue that immigrants often feel
inferior to local residents, who appear to them as self-confident and successful, and that the
Internet helps them shape their identities, hence becoming more self-confident themselves
(540). This is also noticeable in Ifemelu’s experience, who feels insecure when she first
arrives in America; when she is unable to obtain a job, she accepts the offer of a businessman
who needs help relaxing. The work borders on prostitution and is something Ifemelu normally
would never have accepted, but in America, she has debts to pay, she has no money and she is
desperate. When she finally gets a decent job and starts her blog, Ifemelu grows to be more
secure. Her experience, however, is presumably not representative for all black immigrant
women. Ifemelu is both young, able to adapt, and educated. She is furthermore a beautiful and
charming woman, as is repeated several times throughout the novel. She may not be as
privileged as people like Kimberley and Curt, but she has a certain class privilege. The
experiences of immigrant women who cannot afford education or who are not as beautiful and
likeable may be very different. This reflects Adichie’s third-wave feminism, because it
discards the notion that all women share the same experience.
After a decade Ifemelu decides to return to Nigeria. She feels a discontent in America,
which she describes as “cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning
disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness” (Americanah 7). This borderlessness is a
feature of hybridity. Ifemelu has become displaced; she no longer belongs to Nigeria or
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America. Hybrid people become “border subjectivities, no longer reliant on fixed notions of
home and identity to anchor them to a singular sense of self” (McLeod 254). Throughout
Ifemelu’s stay in America, she always feels as if something is missing. She describes it as “[a]
hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther
away, beyond her reach” (Americanah 289). Her memories of Nigeria become distorted: she
can no longer remember the kiosk near her old house and she thinks her old neighbourhood
has become unsafe after there had been an armed robbery, which could have happened
everywhere. Ifemelu still feels a connection to Nigeria, but it is no longer her home: “On the
one hand, Nigeria lacks jobs, university opportunities and equality between sexes; on the
other hand, it is the familiar territory in which they know how to face adversities. In a state of
permanent hesitation, they wish to stay in the United States and return to Africa at the same
time” (Braga and Gonçalves 2). Braga and Gonçalves argue that it is difficult for the
characters in Adichie’s stories to feel fully at home in their new countries: “For these
protagonists, undoubtedly, the transnational identification is made harder by the invisibility
that arises from gender and race affiliations” (6). Ifemelu will never feel at home in America,
not only because she is not born there, but also because people will always treat her
differently because of the colour of her skin. It takes Ifemelu a while to realise that she
actually longs to return to Nigeria. She is starting to imagine Nigeria as the place where she
should be. However, when she finally returns to her home country, Nigeria is not how she
remembers it. She has been living in the Nigerian diaspora, which has turned her notion of
home into an unstable mental product. Ifemelu’s home town must have changed in the years
that she has been abroad, but she herself has also changed, which makes her look at Nigeria in
a different way: “She was no longer sure what was new in Lagos and what was new in
herself” (387). Carine Mardorossian argues that diaspora identities are no longer fixes on
19
binary notions, but instead have become perpetually mobile, as is the definition of a hybrid
identity: “Her identity is no longer to do with being but with becoming” (16).
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Conclusion
This thesis argued that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah offers an outside
perspective on what it means to be black in America and therefore contributes to
understanding the notion of race and gender in African American literature. Political
discourses and racial discrimination are prominent themes in African American novels.
African American literature, literature written by or about African Americans, aims to portray
black characters in a realistic way in order to be able to identify with them. Americanah is
filled with social commentary about race and modern representations of black characters.
However, Americanah cannot be considered to be African American literature, since it is
written by and features a Nigerian woman who has lived in America, but is not African
American. Adichie aims to describe the experience of black immigrant women in the United
States and to undo the double colonisation that black women suffer from. The novel reflects
Adichie’s feminist views and her observations on the notion of race and touches upon theories
written by postcolonial and gender scholars. The protagonist, Ifemelu, is discriminated against
and thought of in Orientalist attitudes. She encounters white privilege and how it can blind
people to issues about race. Ifemelu overcomes her initial insecurities and starts to celebrate
her blackness and femininity. She writes a blog about race, which eventually becomes her
career. Her identity becomes a hybrid one: she no longer belongs to Nigeria, or to America.
She belongs in the Nigerian diaspora, her identity open to change and re-inscription and
perpetually in motion. Ifemelu manages to overcome the stereotypes: she becomes a
successful writer by attacking racial issues, earns a scholarship and returns to her home
country, where she continues to use her blogging skills for her new job. The blog posts serve
as a direct way of giving critique to racial and gender matters and adding to the conversation
regarding those issues. Because Americanah is written from an outside perspective, the
perspective is unburdened by America’s racial history. It is able to shed new light on what it
21
means to be black in America and therefore contributes to understanding the notion of race
and gender in African American literature. Perhaps it is not possible to write an honest novel
about race as an American or African American citizen, but Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie is
neither. Her outside view gives Americanah an honest and refreshing perspective.
22
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