Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah /// Study Guide
Writing Prompts:
1 What is the main project of this book?
Is it a love story that revolves around race or a race story that revolves around love? Is it a story about immigration or homecoming?
When you attempt to answer one or more of these questions, put pressure on the evidence you cite to bolster your opinion. Is your evidence structural (i.e. citing how the book is shaped) or emotional (i.e. citing the distribution of emotional power throughout the narrative)?
2 If we concede that Ifem and Obinze are of similar backgrounds, then to what end are their vastly different experiences in America and England?
Why have both return to Nigeria and find a way to prosper?
3 As “American Africans” as opposed to “African Americans” (with the first word serving as an adjective), Ifemelu discovers that racism pervades life in America. Develop how she humanizes both the unconscious racists and the recipients of this racism?
4 Develop the meaning of the moniker “Americanah” as it connects to Ifem’s mixture of Nigerian pride and shame and her mixture of American pride and shame:
5 In her very powerful Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” Adichie states that to tell one story about a people “robs people of their dignity,” for it “emphasizes how we are different and not how we are similar.” She continues, “if we show a people as one thing over and over again, then that is what they become.”
Describing the perspectives of guests at a dinner party Obinze attends, Adichie writes, “They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty.” (341).
Why underscore that we have one story about Nigerians?
How do Adichie’s multi-faceted stories of Ifemelu counter the fallacy of seeing her as one thing?
6 Hair is a crucial through-line in this novel. Why does Adichie gravitate towards scenes in which a character is getting her hair done, fretting about her hair, or advising others about their own hair? How are attitudes towards the hair of black women indicative of the differences between American and Nigerian cultures? For a large part of the novel, Adichie anchors longer flashbacks to a single scene of Ifemelu getting her hair done in Trenton, NJ; why? How does Ifem’s hair change in the novel and how is thie a outward manifestation of what is occurring within her about her racial identity?
7 Dike’s experiences mark him as an alternative protagonist in this novel; though his perspective never takes over the narration, his struggle to integrate into the mostly white towns to which Aunty Uju moves and to question his Nigerian heritage (not to mention his long-dead father, The General) makes him a foil both to Ifemelu and to Obzine.
How is Dike’s (in)ability to cope with racism in America different from Ifemelu’s? What constitutes the difference?
What might Adichie be suggesting about the ability to endure and overcome racism?
8 Once Ifemelu’s blog takes off, she is invited to lead diversity workshops at schools and businesses. Adichie writes, “The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence.” (377).
How is this a criticism of the reader’s experience of this novel?
What ideas / takeaways for you counter this?
Vocabulary
Characters
Motifs & Themes: BINGO
Discussion Questions
What is the main project of this book? Is it a love story that revolves around race or a race story that revolves around love? Is it a story about immigration or homecoming? Is it a bildungsroman or an exercise in memory? When you attempt to answer one or more of these questions, put pressure on the evidence you cite to bolster your opinion. Is your evidence structural (i.e. citing how the book is shaped) or emotional (i.e. citing the distribution of emotional power throughout the narrative)?
Obinze is proud that he and Ifemelu always have something to talk about even though they are from the same place -- implying that cultural differences are a boon to love. Do they really function that way in this book? What exactly is the relationship between love, culture, and race in this novel?
What force is to blame for the disruption of Ifemelu and Obinze’s love? If Ifemelu were a man, would she have felt more empowered to tell Obinze about her experience at the tennis coach’s house? How about if she were not an immigrant? How about if they were in the same location rather than on separate continents? Do you think the “point” of this narrative is to point to a single cause that draws the lovers apart, or does it rather show the extent to which all the above causes work together to ruin a love? What’s the point of telling a story like that?
What role do the excerpts from Ifemelu’s two blogs play in the telling of this story and the structure of this book? What do they tell us about Ifemelu, her readers, or other characters in the novel? What world-building work do they do? To what extent do they force the reader to be self-conscious about his or her own reading process? How does Adichie introduce these excerpts -- how does she weave them into the fabric of her own narrative? How do our reactions to those blog posts inform or sharpen our reactions to the novel as a whole?
Of the blog, Adichie writes, “She had never talked about God so much. Posting on the website was like giving testimony in church; the echoing roar of approval revived her.” (264). Her zealous attitude towards the blog shows that it may actually draw her closer to her religious mother, even though her mother would probably be horrified by its contents. To what extent is Ifemelu’s blogging in America a reaction against Nigerian culture, a reaction against American culture, a leaning into Nigerian culture, and a leaning into American culture?
At the hair salon, a white woman named Kelsey engages Ifemelu in a conversation about literature. Adichie writes, “She could have blogged about Kelsey, too, this girl who somehow believed that she was miraculously neutral in how she read books, while other people read emotionally.” (234). What would it mean to read something in a “neutral” way as opposed to an “emotional[]” way? Why is “neutral” reading difficult or impossible, generally and for Kelsey in particular? Why might Adichie want to remind her own reader that he or she is not reading neutrally? How might that acknowledgement change the reader’s experience of the novel?
Though most of the novel is transmitted through Ifemelu’s perspective, large swaths of it come through Obinze’s instead. How would you describe the ratio or relationship between those two modes? What does that ratio or relationship tell us about Adichie’s project? Why doesn’t Adichie simply tell the story through Ifemelu’s perspective alone? How does the style of the novel shift during the Obinze sections? How, as a reader, do you react to those shifts when they arrive, and why?
Hair is a crucial through-line in this novel. How many distinct hair scenes can you recall? Why does Adichie gravitate towards scenes in which a character is getting her hair done, fretting about her hair, or advising others about their own hair? How are attitudes towards the hair of black women indicative of the differences between American and Nigerian cultures? Is hair a metaphor for something in this novel, or is it just hair? For a large part of the novel, Adichie anchors longer flashbacks to a single scene of Ifemelu getting her hair done in Trenton, NJ; why?
What unique insights can Ifemelu’s experience provide towards an understanding of the effects of racism in America? What incidents struck you as most indicative of American racism? Why does Adichie choose to explore American racism through a Nigerian lens? What are the most insidious effects of American racism that the reader sees play out in this novel?
Dike’s experiences mark him as an alternative protagonist in this novel; though his perspective never takes over the narration, his struggle to integrate into the mostly white towns to which Aunty Uju moves and to question his Nigerian heritage (not to mention his long-dead father, The General) makes him a foil both to Ifemelu and to Obzine. How does Dike’s experience of race in America compare to Ifemelu’s experience of it? How does his teenage persona compare to Obinze’s? How does his relationship with his mother compare to the other child-parent relationships Adichie depicts? Why does Adichie choose to provide so little explanation for his attempted suicide?
Describing the perspectives of guests at a dinner party Obinze attends, Adichie writes, “They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty.” (341). What are the challenges that face Adichie in her attempt to write about the immigration of middle class Nigerians? What particular challenges face those characters, and what does writing about those challenges teach us about humanity?
Once Ifemelu’s blog takes off, she is invited to lead diversity workshops at schools and businesses. Adichie writes, “The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence.” (377). Does you recognize this foible from your own experience? When -- for example, at Community School -- do we undertake ostensibly difficult conversations without the intention of actually changing but merely in order to feel better about ourselves? Do you think it’s arguable that this novel is guilty of the same weakness?
Reviews and Interviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ijEqposkyk
https://www.npr.org/2013/05/22/183997348/a-different-kind-of-immigrant-experience-in-americanah
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html