(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've loved everything I've read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, so it is not a huge surprise that I also thought Americanah, her latest (and most widely-read?) novel, was frankly stellar.

Americanah is primarily the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian young woman who manages to get a visa to go to college in America and, after several difficult years, becomes internet-famous when she starts a blog titled "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black."

It's also secondarily the story of her high school/college boyfriend/possible one true love, Obinze, who does not manage to get a visa to go to America, and instead ends up in London as an undocumented immigrant having an experience that is some ways wildly different from Ifemelu's, and in some ways depressingly similar.

I read this book for a book club and it was an excellent selection because there is a ton to talk about -- the scathing portraits of racism and global imperalism and classism, and also Chimananda Ngozi Adichie's truly stellar character portraits. We kept coming back to how well she draws even the most minor character, with a kind of ruthless complexity that makes everyone at least a little bit sympathetic and also everyone at least a little bit morally complicit. (We talked a lot about Ifemelu's American boyfriends, who are maybe the best examples of this; the first one is a rich and handsome and deeply clueless white guy who does not really understand a single thing most of the time except on the brief occasions that he does, and the second is an upper-class black American professor who is consumed with the need to do the morally correct action at all times, down to choosing a cereal brand. Both of them, in very different ways, are very understandable and quite sympathetic and kind of horrible.)

Personally, I was really struck by the way all the characters not only changed throughout the book, but frequently looked quite different from the outside and inside. The way Ifemelu and Obinze see each other is not wrong, exactly, but it's obviously not the same as the way they see themselves -- which seems obvious when I put it like that but is the kind of thing in writing that I feel like is really hard to do in the way that Adichie does it, which not only makes you go 'oh, yes, of course that's how people are' but also makes you look at all the side characters with the understanding that almost certainly there is stuff going on in their heads that allows them to explain their actions to themselves.

Also Adichie is really, REALLY good at writing about writing, about the role that Ifemelu takes as self-described Outside Observer, and specifically about writing a blog on the internet and the ways this sort of takes over thought processes such that an event happens and the first thing you do in your head is start composing the blog entry (or funny tweet, or tumblr post, or whatever) that you're going to write about it. I totally do this, and I bet some of you do it too.

Comments

[zulu]

Thanks for this! Another hold placed!

[skygiants]

:D I hope you like it!

[kaberett]

I really enjoyed how distinct all the characters were (especially in comparison to Maggie Stiefvater's Ballad and Lament, which I read either side) -- and distinct not only from each other but from their temporally-displaced selves, while maintaining clear continuity of personhood.

And I was so busy being caught up in noticing that that I didn't really notice how people look different from the outside (because it was just so natural and so oh-of-course), so thank you for flagging that up to me!

[skygiants]

It's so good! How the characters changed internally in the different phases of their lives is one of the things I noticed most -- and the external characters sort of highlighted this for me with the internal characters. I spent a lot of time thinking about Aunty Uju, especially, and Aunty Uju as a parallel to Ifemelu, and all the stuff we probably don't see about what's going on in her head while Ifemelu is thinking 'wow, I barely recognize Aunty Uju the way she is here.'

[plinythemammaler]

Oh man *___*!!! this book!! the first time i read it I was almost thrown off by the end, by how messy and flawed their reunion was, by how none of the complications and duties of Obinze's marriage and family disappear, but then after DISTINCT SHOCK that everything has consequences and is viewed from different angles and that nothing is tied up I realised it was SUCH A GOOD ENDING

Also YES her second American boyfriend and how subtly the ways in which he is a little horrible is drawn out - it's such a careful portrait and he is so good in so many ways and yet his attempts to be good end up eclipsing his understanding of being human --

I just loved the sharp social satire and truth in it which ALSO combines with this very subtle complicit character work

also as a British person the UK section rang all too true, oh man. And that Obinze moves for hope, for ambition, for the ideas about England he has --- I'm so glad we get these kinds of narratives as well as I see stories of """correct!"" immigration in the press bitten down only into the Acceptably Desperate And Worthy without room for all the other emotions human beings feel, without thought of people as people first!

and YES writing about writing, and Ifemelu's Disappointing Women's Magazine Experience!! and the INTERNET written about by someone who actually understands it and how social networks online operate!

Have you read "The thing around your neck" which is her short story collection, btw??

[skygiants]

Yessss I love how imperfect their reunion is, because they both have become different people -- like, of course they have, they can't not have. And the ways in which they looked at each other were always a little too idealized to be real, anyway.

His attempts to be good eclipse his understanding of being a human, that's such a good way of putting it! He gives himself no human leeway and therefore nobody else either, and you understand why he is that way AND YET.

The bit where Obinze is thinking about 'correct' versus 'incorrect' versions for immigration, the hopelessness and stagnation that the people he's talking to can't understand, is one of the things I still remember best and most clearly about the book. SO GOOD.

I haven't read 'The thing around your neck' yet! All her novels, but no short stories.

[aamcnamara]

Okay so I read the ending after book club and I would agree with the phrasing of "possible one true love" because I do not think they were ~Fated but! They found something in each other they could not get anywhere else, both in high school/college and at the ending. That something is different I think between their early relationship and the book's ending, but it is somewhat the same too.

(Also when I read the bits with the boyfriend's sister, somehow seeing her made me realize instantly exactly why he was like he was. And seeing that made her a more full character to me, too. Something about their sibling relationship just struck me as 100% accurate, and that reflected back on how I saw both of them. Which Adichie is SO GREAT AT, oh gosh, not only people but relationships between people. (Sometimes relationships between the same person at different stages of their life, too.))

[skygiants]

Yes I think that is a good way of putting it! And I think part of what they have at the end is based on their idea/imagination of what they had at the beginning, rather than what was really there, but that doesn't necessarily make it less true or important to them.

(It's funny because I thought their sibling relationship was FASCINATING but it didn't click with me as a relationship I recognized at all -- but then I am the older sister so it's possible that I'm too deep inside to see it! Though in general yes I TOTALLY agree about Adichie and interpersonal relationships.)

[stultiloquentia]

This was one of the best books I read last year.

[skygiants]

It was so good! Her writing is just fantastic.