Americanah

“She would always remember this moment, these words: I’m chasing you.” 

This quote sums up Ifemelu’s relationship with Obinze. He will always be the one pursuing her, chasing her, despite her lack of contact in America. He chases her right up until the novel’s close, when, having left his wife, he appears on her doorstep and repeats these words.

“And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.” 

This quote speaks to Ifemelu’s personality; she is a deeply restless individual who seeks out happiness and meaning in her life, but is then unable to accept that she deserves it. As soon as she experiences something profoundly good, be it a loving relationship or a stable job, she finds a way to self-sabotage.  

“They roared with laughter, at that word ‘Americanah,’ wreathed in glee, the fourth syllable extended, and at the thought of Bisi, a girl in the form below them, who had come back from a short trip to America with odd affectations, pretending she no longer spoke Yoruba, adding a slurred r to every English word she spoke.” 

The book’s title comes into play here, with the word “Americanah” referring to Nigerians who travel to America and adopt its slang, accent, and world view, much to the derision of their Nigerian friends and family. Throughout the novel, Ifemelu teeters between judging those who adopt American customs and acknowledging that there are certain benefits in adopting America’s language and customs. 

“Aunty Uju opened her mouth as though to say something and then she closed it and turned and walked upstairs, both of them aware that something between them was now different.” 

After a teenaged Ifemelu tries to convince Aunty Uju that her (married) boyfriend is no good for her, Aunty Uju slaps her. Though Uju had always been Ifemelu’s closest confidante, this reaction shows Ifemelu that Uju has serious weaknesses, and represents a watershed moment in both their relationship and Ifemelu’s coming of age. 

“Ifemelu stood there for a long time, her body unsure of itself, overwhelmed by a sense of newness. But she felt, also, a frisson of expectation, an eagerness to discover America.” 

On Ifemelu’s first night in America, she sleeps on Uju’s floor. Though she is uncomfortable and without any sense of grounding in her new country and life, she is nonetheless excited. This will quickly contrast with the depression that sets in during her search for a job, but is also comparable to her sense of excitement when she finally leaves America for Nigeria, years later. 

“It terrified her, to be unable to visualize tomorrow.” 

While job-hunting, Ifemelu sinks into a deep depression. Without the cultural vocabulary to describe mental illness, she becomes paralyzed by her condition. Though her more Americanized friends try to convince her that depression is normal and treatable, she struggles with cultural expectations and the idea that depression is “American.” 

“With each month of silence that passed between them, she felt the silence itself calcify, and become a hard and hulking statue, impossible to defeat.” 

This quote describes the breakdown of Ifemelu’s relationship with Obinze. Ashamed and unable to tell him how she was sexually exploited during her job hunt, she ceases all contact. Though she misses him and feels lost without him, the weeks creep by, and it becomes harder and harder to overcome what she’s done by ignoring him.  

“[Curt’s friends] expected certain things of her, and forgave certain things from her, because she was foreign. Once, sitting with them at a bar, she heard Curt talking to Brad, and Curt said ‘blowhard.’ She was struck by the word, by the irredeemable Americanness of it. Blowhard. It was a word that would never occur to her. To understand this was to realize that Curt and his friends would, on some level, never be fully knowable to her.” 

This quote describes Ifemelu’s relationship to her white boyfriend, Curt, and his American friends. A simple word like “blowhard” shows Ifemelu just how different she is from American-born white people. A word that comes easily to them, unbidden, is one she never could have used herself. To her, the word signifies that she will never truly be American and never truly understand Americans. 

“On an unremarkable day in early spring—the day was not bronzed with special light, nothing of any significance happened…she looked in the mirror, sank her fingers into her hair, dense and spongy and glorious, and could not imagine it any other way. That simply, she fell in love with her hair.” 

Much of Ifemelu’s early experiences in America are dominated by reactions to her hair. She straight-irons it to look more “professional” as she hunts for jobs and must travel far out of her way to find a salon that can cater to her hair. When she finally decides to go “natural,” she is purposefully defying American expectations of what a black woman’s hair should look like, and claiming her body for herself.  

“They walked so quickly, these people, as though they had an urgent destination, a purpose to their lives, while he did not. His eyes would follow them, with a lost longing, and he would think: You can work, you are legal, you are visible, and you don’t even know how fortunate you are.” 

While living in London, Obinze works illegally and finds himself envying those who can live and work as they please, something that he has been denied. Obinze came from a relatively privileged background in Nigeria and so is shocked by his new poverty and invisibility. 

“He changed, curled more inwardly into himself. He was, by turns, inflamed by anger, twisted by confusion, withered by sadness.” 

Just as Ifemelu experienced depression in America, Obinze experiences depression in London. He is beaten down by his attempts to marry into citizenship, his low wages, and his illegal status. By the time he is deported, he is so unhappy with life in London that he accepts his fate willingly. 

“It puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in child care?” 

Though race is the primary issue in Americanah, Adichie occasionally touches upon gender as well. While living in London, Obinze spends much of his time assisting the wife of his friend, Nicholas. In her, he sees a devotion to her children and husband that far outstrips her attention to her own needs. This is, importantly, something that Ifemelu would never do—she is considered an unusually outspoken, independent Nigerian woman.  

“Self-satisfaction, that was the difference in [Emenike]. He was married to a British woman, lived in a British home, worked at a British job, traveled on a British passport…Now his backbone was stiff with self-satisfaction. He was sated.” 

Here, Obinze describes his former friend, Emenike. Though Emenike was always a flashy individual, he has become unbearably pretentious in London. It is as though he has ticked all the boxes on a checklist, and therefore considers himself better than Obinze, who is living and working illegally. When Obinze later becomes rich, Emenike will try to strike up a closer friendship, but Obinze will remember this moment in London, and decide against it. 

“There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther away, beyond her reach.” 

During her relationship with Curt, a devoted and loving boyfriend, Ifemelu experiences extreme anxiety. Despite the fact that Curt is wealthy, attractive, and adoring, Ifemelu is restless. Unable to reconcile or understand her feelings, she deliberately destroys her relationship with Curt by cheating on him with a neighbor she doesn’t even like. 

“It was true that race was not embroidered in the fabric of her history; it had not been etched on her soul.”

Though Ifemelu has become a respected race blogger, she is called out by American people of color for not truly understanding race. Because she is Nigerian, a racially homogenous country, she did not grow up experiencing the racial discrimination that black Americans did. Until she began college in America, she had never had to think about race, a privilege not afforded to African-Americans. 

“And so she had the dizzying sensation of falling, falling into the new person she had become, falling into the strange familiar.” 

When Ifemelu returns to Lagos, she experiences much of the same sensations as when she first arrived in America—excitement, fear, and a desire to see her “new” world. Lagos, however, is also imbued with her childhood. Despite how much it has changed, and is therefore strange, it will always be familiar to her.  

“He had not merely said ‘welcome’ but ‘welcome back,’ as though he somehow knew that she was truly back. She thanked him, and in the gray of the evening darkness, the air burdened with smells, she ached with an almost unbearable emotion that she could not name. It was nostalgic and melancholy, a beautiful sadness for the things she had missed and the things she would never know.” 

Though Ifemelu left America with an American passport and the possibility of returning, it is here that she realizes that she has come to Nigeria to stay. The smells of her childhood bring her back to a time before her hardships in America, and make her realize how much she missed while she lived life on another continent.  

“But Aunty Uju bought Dike’s ticket and now here they were, she and Dike in her car, crawling through the crush of traffic in Oshodi, Dike looking wide-eyed out of the window. ‘Oh my God, Coz, I’ve never seen so many black people in the same place!’ he said.” 

When Dike visits Lagos, he is amazed by the sheer number of black people. Though Nigerian born, he has grown up in America, and was frequently the only black student in his class. His childhood was marked by incidents of alienation—a school counselor who thought he didn’t need sunscreen, a high school administration that assumed he was responsible for hacking a computer—and so to see a country filled with people who look just like him is affecting. He is no longer alone. 

“There was a moment, a caving of the blue sky, an inertia of stillness, when neither of them knew what to do, he walking towards her, she standing there squinting, and then he was upon her and they hugged.” 

This is the moment that Ifemelu and Obinze meet for the first time in many years. Though they are hesitant, though they have both hurt each other, though both have carved out new lives for themselves in the intervening years, they hug, and it is though nothing has changed. 

“I realized that I could buy America and it lost its shine.” 

Obinze, who once idolized and idealized America, here explains why he is no longer so enchanted with it. As a teenager, he consumed American media like The Cosby Show; once he became wealthy, he realized all of American culture was for sale. It was no longer authentic to him. 

“She would not cry, it was ridiculous to cry after so long, but her eyes were filling with tears and there was a boulder in her chest and stinging in her throat. The tears felt itchy. She made no sound. He took her hand in his, both clasped on the table, and between them silence grew, an ancient silence that they both knew. She was inside this silence and she was safe.” 

Here, Ifemelu reveals to Obinze her experience of sexual exploitation in America. This experience is what caused her to cut off contact with him. Obinze listens to the story and says that he wishes she had told him, then. Ifemelu’s biggest fear—that Obinze would reject her—is lifted. She cries in his arms, knowing that he does not judge her. 

“‘What happens when you go home and climb into bed with your wife? What happens?’ she asked, and felt herself wanting to cry. Something had cracked and spoiled between them.” 

Though Ifemelu and Obinze conduct an affair, the strain becomes too much for Ifemelu. She thinks constantly about Obinze’s wife, Kosi, and knows she cannot live her life as a mistress, like Aunty Uju did. 

“Love was a kind of grief. This is what the novelists meant by suffering.” 

Obinze has asked for space and Ifemelu has responded by calling him a coward. In the following weeks, both grieve the loss of their new relationship. Obinze worries what a divorce would do to his young daughter, while Ifemelu is more concerned with her own loss, wallowing in the pain of Obinze’s rejection.