Over all I loved this book for the details. I love how she spends the first half of the story in the salon daydreaming about her past because it takes that dang long to get her hair done.
I love how she learns something from every boyfriend she has because that's how boyfriends are. Women brag about how they can "change a man" but it's really our men who somehow feel obligated to teach us, train us, and mold us into the women they want us to be.
As a black woman who has dated white men, and has married a white man I absolutely love how she described Ifemelu being "captured" by hCurt. Because that's how I felt with my white lovers in the past. They liked me, they claimed me, they wrapped their worlds around me so that it seemed foolish to break away from them. This was not always a bad thing. As with Ifumelu, sometimes you want to be swept off your feet. Sometimes you need that security. But it can be a bit breathtaking in the moment there comes a point when you have to reestablish your agency or you start to feel like a prisoner.
I super loved the culture clashes. Just the little ways being raised Nigerian differed from being born a black American. Now that I have a "half-cast" daughter I'd love to raise her in a place where race isn't a constant grinding issue that we have to deal with. A place where you can just state your pedigree as a factual description and move on sounds like heaven to me. But as an American black person I'm inclined to believe that race is actually an issue everywhere. The Nigerians just haven't noticed how they are being subjugated yet.
I could talk all day about her blog posts and other statements made so eloquently, and potently in the book. I have spent years discussing the same issues with my conservative co-workers before even reading this book. It felt gratifying to read a book absolutely making the same points I've been trying to make for years - peppered in with ideas from a the perspective of the "intellectual outsider".
I would love to have read more of Obinze's life in London. I've never been there but I'm very curious about the history of the black British and what they think of it all. I'm open to any book suggestions in comments down below.
Here I must acknowledge that my impulse was to dislike Ifemelu by the end of the book. I understand though that's not essential for the reader to like and agree with the main character of a good story. It doesn't make it a bad book that I'm not sure I'd be Ifemelu's friend at the end of it all. It seems to me that the writer, Adichie, acknowledges this because people start telling her off once she returns to Nigeria. American's just smile and chop it up to her quirky personality, but Nigerians let her have it. Even the white girl at the office.
However while considering my growing dislike of Ifemelu I realized that what was bothering me was the masculine nature of her story arch. She was the one who left home, went to a foreign country, lost contact with her lover and "sewed some wild oats" while Obinze got married and started a family of his own.
Then I realized that it wasn't so much Ifemelu - dating, and cheating, and being preachy -that upset me at the end of the story. It was Obinze that I disliked.
As a married woman with a daughter I may have taken the third act sort of personal. That being said I naturally sided with Obinze's poor wife, Kosi who is described as a beautiful woman, and devoted wife. She does everything she can think of to keep her husband happy and he never tells her what is bothering him. She never knew that she was a consolation prize. He married her because at the the time it was easy to do so. To Kosi Obinze is a good man, he treats her well, he makes money. He is her life line. She can't just let him go. She has to keep him happy so she'll be financially secure. She's given him a child, and wants to give him more. Because of the culture she has grown up in she believes that if she'd given birth to a son he'd be happier with her. She has no idea how much he loves their daughter, and how having a son would not have changed anything. She doesn't know what it is that she does that bothers him because he never tells her.
Every other boy in the book fancys himself a teacher. Obinze too encouraged Ifem to read the books he liked and listen to the music he liked to teach her about him. But once he was married he just claimed up!
Then Obinze's hot ex-girlfriend that he's been pining for fifteen years flies back into the country after learning that he is married. In a matter of just a few weeks of seeing her he's ready to divorce Kosi and get back with his high school sweet heart. He just snatches the rug out from under her because he isn't happy. The story leaves Kosi after this - probably blaming herself for his unhappiness, willing herself to have his son somehow.
After fifteen years of coldly ignoring him, Ifemelu should not get a do over so easily. Obinze should certainly have more dignity than to beg the way he does. When he pulls back to consider his next move she calls him a "fucking coward" because she isn't getting what she wants. This causes him to become obsessed with her. She ignores him again for seven whole months! If Obinze had been the woman in the story I'd still want to slap him for the way he lets this eat away at him.
I wish their story arch had ended after they had sex for the first time in fifteen years. (This is still cheating, but its cheating with a purpose!) The tension should have been over, the spell broken. They could then talk for a while and realize that they've actually grown into two entirely different people since their school days. They remain friends but Obinze goes back to his wife and his life, and Ifemelu goes back to her blog. She finds a new man who really gets her, or continues to be happily single. Whatever. The End.
Instead Obinze goes to her door graveling against the best wishes of the people who know him. Kosi might even tolerate him cheating because mistresses seem to be a common thing among the wealthy men. But Adichie checked that move by having Ifemelu state in her blog how she feels about mistresses publicly. She does remove the post. So I suppose we are left to wonder if they eventually go down that rout.
The Author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a remarkable writer. She was born in September of 1977 in Nigeria. She is world famous for her novels and short story collections. She considered one of the most prolific english speaking/writing authors in her home country of Nigera.
I have also read "Half-A-Yellow-Sun". I misjudged this one by the title I thought it would be a light fun book to pick up after finishing the Dune and Parable of the Sower. Once I recover from this mistake I plan to write a few essays about each.
In Conclusion
I am happy I read Americana and Half-a-Yellow Sun!
Both were eye opening novels that made me feel as though I had traveled. I close this book feeling like the kind of woman who has time to sit in a cafe' with my lap top and daydream.
It's clearly inspired me to get back into posting again.
But I'll be happy to jump back into the realms of dark fiction, mystery, and sci-fi that I'm used to.
Sula by Toni Morrison
