Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Amy  

fiction

Ifemelu and Obinze were planning their future together in Nigeria when Ifemelu left to attend school in the United States.  From there, their lives followed different paths. Americanah chronicles their lives and experiences.

While this novel was too long and slow-paced for my liking, I really appreciated reading the experiences of African immigrants living in the US.  Africans living in America have different histories, cultures, and issues than African Americans, with whom they tend to be lumped. I found the characters’ perspectives and explanations enlightening and eye-opening—both those perspectives when coming to the US from Africa as well as those when returning to Africa from the US.

While I have read a lot about citizens of other countries, I haven’t read too many contemporary stories about immigrants coming to the US.  Even though the US accepts immigrants as students, sufficient resources for those students are not always provided.  Ifemelu really struggled upon her arrival. The novel’s descriptions of Nigerian culture were vivid and mostly new to me. I had previously read about impoverished Nigerians rather than the wealthier variety around whom this novel is centered.

The author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was definitely not subtle in making her points. She displayed her opinions on many topics, mostly related to race in America, in the form of blog posts written by Ifemelu. There were also several long conversations among groups of gathered people in which Adichie further relayed her thoughts on culture and racism. For me, these group conversations grew tedious and went on for way too long.  I tended to zone out while listening to these sections in the audiobook.   

The audiobook narrator, Adjoa Andoh, had a very pleasant voice and was a good voice actor. I sometimes had trouble understanding some of the heaviest African accents, especially in the beginning before I got used to them. But that’s not her fault. My main complaint about Andoh’s narration was that she mispronounced many American proper nouns which the characters, living in the US, would not have done. Andoh’s true accent is British and I’m not normally a snob about non-American voice actors attempting American accents, but I felt she should have done the homework to pronounce some of these proper nouns (like the state of Maryland—she pronounced Mare-ee-land instead of Mare-uh-lind) in the same way these characters would have pronounced them.  She had a good repertoire of voices and accents so I’ll give her an A-.