Ifemelu, the feisty protagonist of Americanah, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie’s third novel, has views on most things, and, not having been
blessed with much in the way of frontal control, Ifemelu does not shy away from
airing her views, which, more often than not, amount to acerbic animadversion:
be they her dismissal of V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River, which,
apparently, is all about the battered self-image of an Indian man, fatally
wounded about not being born a European, or the racism—in particular those of
the liberals—in America.
There are lots of characters in Americanah, but at its
centre are Ifemelu and Obinze. Ifemelu and Obinze are childhood sweethearts,
both belonging to the educated Nigerian middle-class, Obinze, being the child
of a university professor, perhaps a few rungs higher than Ifemelu. Obinze and
Ifemelu both want to migrate to America. Why? They are not starving or fleeing
war or starvation, as Ifemelu admits at one point. They both are “raised well”.
Yet they want to immigrate because they are fleeing “the oppressive lethargy of
choicelessness” in Nigeria. Such examples as are given of the lack of choice
available to the young and educated protagonists include recurrent strikes in
Nigeria and the obligatory corruption scandals (both of which are, of course,
unheard of in Europe or America). So Ifemelu and Obinze wish to escape Nigeria
and find a haven of satisfaction and fulfilment in America, except that Ifemelu
ends up, as planned, in America, while Obinze travels to England. Neither finds
the conditions in the countries to which they have immigrated quite up to their
satisfaction. Indeed, as their story unfolds—Ifemelu spends many years doing
menial jobs as a nanny and au pair; Obinze is a manual labourer. Both do
illegal things to make ends meet, Obinze even attempting a sham marriage after
his valid visa expires in order to extend his stay in the United Kingdom—you
wonder whether the “lethargy of choicelessness” in Nigeria would have been all
that worse than the shadowy, humiliating, soul-destroying lives they lead in
America and England. Obinze, who is less irritating of the two main
protagonists—probably because he does not hold clichéd views about the country
to which he has chosen to spend his life in—is caught at the registry office
just when he is about to declare his marriage to a woman of Angolan-Portuguese
descent, and is deported back to Nigeria. Obinze accepts his fate without
protestation. He does not fight the deportation citing human rights abuse; and,
upon his return to Nigeria, does that which he could have done without
travelling to the United Kingdom to do back-breaking work in a warehouse: he
becomes the middle-man of a local big man—a property developer more dodgy than
the donor kebab in your local Turkish Takeaway—and becomes filthy rich. He
marries a good Nigerian woman who has child-bearing thighs, who goes to the
local Church, and responds to Obinze’s every wish as a dictate from the Holy
Trinity. What more can a man want? In Obinze’s case, he wants Ifemelu, who,
after she went to America, inexplicably (to Obinze) dropped him. Ifemelu, in
America, has done somewhat better than Obinze (she does not get deported, for a
start): she lands a job with a liberal white family as an au pair (and repays
the awkward kindness shown her by her employer by nursing a smouldering
resentment); then hooks up with a stinking rich nephew of the mother of the
children she is looking after. When the nephew ditches her (because she is
unfaithful) Ifemelu gets together with an African-American academic faster than
a stripper in Devil’s Advocate gets out of her outfit. All of this leaves
Ifemelu with plenty of time and energy to run a blog about race (“Raceteenth or
Various Observations about American Blacks”), which is a perfect outlet to give
vent to the negative energy—a radioactive fusion of feud and resentment,
fostered by Ifemelu’s talent for ferreting out insults and snubs by the whites,
when probably none is intended—which Ifemelu possesses in abundance. In this
blog—which becomes more popular than that of the woman who wrote Eat
Praay and Love—Ifemelu writes
on topics such as Barak Obama (yawn), her relationship with her white boyfriend
(yawn, yawn), the difference between African-American and American-African
(honestly, do the majority of the African-Americans or American-Africans
care?), and hair of the Africans (rather a lot on this topic: that the majority
of African-American (or American-African, for that matter) women do not allow
the hair to grow into a natural afro and endure unspeakable miseries and
hardship to make them soft and straight, is down to the racism of white
folk—don’t ask me how; I didn’t get it either). In the blog, Ifemelu makes
profound observations such as she did not realise that she was black in her
native Nigeria, and how she fit the description only after she arrived in
America (probably because, unlike America, Nigeria is not a multi-racial,
multi-cultural society—surely, this would not have escaped Ifemelu’s notice).
Finally, Ifemelu, too, returns to Nigeria, where—guess what?—she decides,
eventually, to start another blog (an idea that evidently did not occur to her
before she went to America and lived illegally). She reignites her relationship
with Obinze, who, unsurprisingly and notwithstanding his wife’s child-bearing
thighs (perhaps because of them), is still holding out a candle for Ifemelu. As
this sprawling novel comes to an end, the reader is reasonably certain that
Ifemelu has wrecked Obinze’s marriage.
Ifemelu exists on the most captivating edge of cynicism when
it comes to race, although you get the impression that she can’t be truly
sardonic: despite her outward scornful and mocking disposition, Ifemelu does
seem to be in touch with her emotions, and her various actions throughout the
novel suggest that she is also a hard-nosed realist. In other words, in
Ifemelu, Adichie has valiantly tried to create a character that is complicated:
witty, mordant, intelligent, outspoken, but also with its vulnerable side, all
of which ought to make Ifemelu the kind of girl-friend every red-blooded man
with higher than average IQ would wish for, the kind of girl-friend who would
fulfil all your dirty desires in bed, and, afterwards, hold an intellectually
invigorating discussion with you on the race-relations in America, making
provocative statements, if you happen to have an interest in the matter.
Americanaha attempts simultaneously to be a love story as well as a commentary on the race relations
in America from the eyes of an immigrant (hence the distinction between
African-American and American-African), but manages, regrettably, to do neither
convincingly. The key event in the novel that makes Ifemelu sever contact with
Obinze is unconvincing, not least in light of the trajectory of Ifemelu’s life
after this supposedly seminal event. As for the various observations focusing
on the attitudes of whites, their hypocrisies and unconscious prejudices,
towards blacks, these are, no doubt, intended to be incisive, pithy, trenchant
etcetera. To be fair to Adichie, they are all of these at times; however, for
the most part they seem just shallow, banal and petulant. It is impossible to
draw generalized conclusions based on these observations, which rarely rise
above the cliché. Ifemelu, you get the impression, is, forever, like the first
year university student who is trying oh-so-hard to be interesting, cool, and
different from the rest. She is mildly amusing in the beginning; afterwards she
grates on your nerves.
The strength of the novel is Adichie’s prose, which flows
smoothly and, and times, manages to be sharp and observant. That, however, is
not good enough, I am afraid, to shift the novel out of the second lane. This
is not a novel that is generous in its tone. It lacks poignancy. It also lacks
drama. It is not a novel that makes you think, something which Sir Vidiya’s
novel did with great success.
