All pieces of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s works that I have read, both fiction and non-fiction have all been amazing, interesting and mind blowing, but one out of all Americanah is a grand text with high complexities, I have been unable to let go, I go over it over and over again, because of the complexity of the novel.

Americanah has received different appreciations and ratings over many issues, racism, sexism, love, immigration issues, human psyche, cultural differences amidst others. This has allowed the novel to travel a long way beyond its source and has been able to shape human feelings and understanding about differences both racial difference and gender difference. But coupled with all these areas that the novel has points its pointer, it has amazingly capture my mind in the aspect of domestic values and patriotism towards Nigerian products.

The story centers on Ifemelu who travels from her home Nigeria to America to study. She has been in love with Obinze here in Nigeria, and their relationship is well known and acknowledged by friends and family of both lovers.

Unfortunately, when Ifemelu gets to America, busy works, mental health clash and emotions betrayed her and created  a communication lacuna between her and Obinze which results into indirect breakup due to lack of communication.

Obinze on the other end has tried all his  best to communicate Ifemelu but all to no avail. After several years he then moved to London where he is about to get married into a contract weeding (an illegal act) in order to get a green card and start to have a better life, but he is being caught and deported to Nigeria. 

He gets to Nigeria and he is able to find his way into making it big and becoming a wealthy person, Ifemelu on the other end has also become an accomplished blogger who writes about racism in America. But after thirteen years, she decides to come back to Nigeria after entering numbers of unsuccessful relationships with both white and Afro American. 

On a fateful day she meets one of her old acquaintance who happens to know her and Obinze together and slight discussion of Obinze comes up which leaves a great imprint on Ifemelu’s mind. After concluding on going back to Nigeria, she messages Obinze and three weeks after getting back to Nigeria they meet and start to have a pseudo romantic relationship.

Though they never started dating officially, yet they have been doing more than what dating couples do. Obinze’s wife who has given birth to a beautiful girl for him complains about the sudden change, though she feels bothered, she really does not want to question his authority. She loves her husband and daughter and she is attracted to Obinze because of her skin pigment. They debate to take their daughter to a school with foreign scheme and teaches foreign language – French especially.     

Eventually after several sex between Obinze and Ifemelu they both part and individual goes thier way.

Chimamanda is able to compound love, race, sexism, cultural differences and migration issue together in just one text and this distinct the novel from other novel and raise the novel to a higher status. But aside that, there are deferent occasion where high regard is given to things that are not African over Africa’s product, a school with foreign scheme is preferred over Nigerian scheme, foreign accent is preferred over natural accent to the extent that people mimic the European and American ndd force themselves to produce diluted and mystified accent. A white manager is recommended over a Nigerian manager in order to be favoured, lucky and successful in Nigerian business, people prefer to look like the Americans or Europeans in order to be beautiful rather than African beauty and lots of loss of values for mother product of  which has led to the discourse of  loss of identity in the text.

This makes the complexity of the text so obvious and interesting that, despite the volume of the text, after first reading, second reading is required in order to capture the complexities trapped in the text. And this makes the novel worth reading and highly recommendable.

 Chimanda has been able to do a very great work to speak out different ramifications just in one text.     

© Joshua Temitope OLADEBO, 2022