Americanah

Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. 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.

Americanah was a love story backdropped with the Nigerian experience in the UK, the United States, and Nigeria. It explores the Nigerians’ diaspora’s situation in returning to their society that is yet to reach the social status of the place they migrated to and the dilemma that presents in adjusting. The book also explored the tension of racism, both between western institutions and blacks, and African Americans and Africans and how their responses are shaped. A very interesting part of the book was the social commentaries on Ifemelu’s blog that provided a non-fictional commentary to real issues on ground to include the politics of black hair.

I think the best description of Americanah is a telling of the young Nigerian story.

I felt somewhere towards the end of the book upon Ifemelu’s return to Nigeria the book began to drag, but all in all, it still gave a somewhat satisfying ending to our Nigerian story.