Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

But, after that afternoon, her God changed. He became exacting. Relaxed hair offended Him. Dancing offended Him. She bartered with Him, offering starvation in exchange for prosperity, for a job promotion, for good health.

The biggest problem in this country is not corruption. The problem is that there are many qualified people who are not where they are supposed to be because they won’t lick anybody’s ass, or they don’t know which ass to lick or they don’t even know how to lick an ass. I’m lucky to be licking the right ass.

They would laugh with derision, but only a mild derision, because she was still their African sister, even if she had briefly lost her way.

Bartholomew wore khaki trousers pulled up high on his belly, and spoke with an American accent filled with holes, mangling words until they were impossible to understand. Ifemelu sensed, from his demeanour, a deprived rural upbringing that he tried to compensate for with his American affectation, his gonnas and wannas.

He talked about Nigerian politics with the fervid enthusiasm of a person who followed it from afar, who read and reread articles on the Internet. “Kudirat’s death will not be in vain, it will only galvanize the democratic movement in a way that even her life did not! I just wrote an article about this issue online in Nigerian Village.”

and it surprised her how profusely he wrote, how actively he pursued airless arguments.

Ifemelu imagined the writers, Nigerians in bleak houses in America, their lives deadened by work, nursing their careful savings throughout the year so that they could visit home in December for a week, when they would arrive bearing suitcases of shoes and clothes and cheap watches, and see, in the eyes of their relatives, brightly burnished images of themselves. Afterwards they would return to America to fight on the Internet over their mythologies of home, because home was now a blurred place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of how inconsequential they had become.

I’ve met a lot of people here with white mothers and they are so full of issues, eh. I didn’t know I was even supposed to have issues until I came to America.

These differences between African Americans and American Africans are what really make this novel stand out

How did they know when to laugh, what to laugh about?

As they walked out of the store, Ifemelu said, “I was waiting for her to ask ‘Was it the one with two eyes or the one with two legs?’ Why didn’t she just ask ‘Was it the black girl or the white girl?’ ” Ginika laughed. “Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.”

“In graduate school I knew a woman from Africa who was just like this doctor, I think she was from Uganda. She was wonderful, and she didn’t get along with the African American woman in our class at all. She didn’t have all those issues.” “Maybe when the African American’s father was not allowed to vote because he was black, the Ugandan’s father was running for parliament or studying at Oxford,” Ifemelu said.

The last time Ifemelu visited, Aunty Uju told him, “I will send you back to Nigeria if you do that again!” speaking Igbo as she did to him only when she was angry, and Ifemelu worried that it would become for him the language of strife.

don’t really know what’s happening in the real world.” “That’s a pretty strong opinion.” “I don’t know how to have

In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds—class, ideology, region, and race.

Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don’t merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. Intermarriage is discouraged and on the rare occasion that it happens, is considered remarkable.

You must nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area. It is called the black nod. It is a way for black people to say “You are not alone, I am here too.”

When you watch television and hear that a “racist slur” was used, you must immediately become offended. Even though you are thinking “But why won’t they tell me exactly what was said?” Even though you would like to be able to decide for yourself how offended to be, or whether to be offended at all, you must nevertheless be very offended.

It puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in child care?

He knew of the many stories of friends and relatives who, in the harsh glare of life abroad, became unreliable, even hostile, versions of their former selves. But what was it about the stubbornness of hope, the need to believe in your own exceptionality, that these things happened to other people whose friends were not like yours? He

The other day Marcia was talking about how black women are fat because their bodies are sites of anti-slavery resistance. Yes, that’s true, if burgers and sodas are anti-slavery resistance.”

Nathan had told her, some months earlier, in a voice filled with hauteur, that he did not read any fiction published after 1930. “It all went downhill after the thirties,” he said.

Are they intentionally unlikeable

“We humans are not supposed to eat with utensils,” she said.

Don’t say “Oh, racism is over, slavery was so long ago.” We are talking about problems from the 1960s, not the 1860s. If you meet an elderly American black man from Alabama, he probably remembers when he had to step off the curb because a white person was walking past. I bought a dress from a vintage shop on eBay the other day, made in 1960, in perfect shape, and I wear it a lot. When the original owner wore it, black Americans could not vote because they were black.

Well, white folks don’t get treated like shit in upper-class African American communities and white folks don’t get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don’t give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don’t stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don’t choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don’t tell white kids that they’re not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don’t try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks

“Why is it so remarkable that he’s articulate?”

“Even the Idea of Being Ready Is Ridiculous.” Does nobody see how absurd it is to ask people if they are ready for a black president? Are you ready for Mickey Mouse to be president? How about Kermit the Frog? And Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

“For you and Paula, fried chicken is battered. For me, fried chicken has no batter. I just thought about how you both have a lot in common.” “We have fried chicken in common? Do you realize how loaded fried chicken is as a metaphor here?”

She said “motherland” and “Yoruba religion” often, glancing at Ifemelu as though for confirmation, and it was a parody of Africa that Ifemelu felt uncomfortable about and then felt bad for feeling so uncomfortable.

they can do precious or they can do pretentious.

“We prove that the world can be like this room. It can be a safe and equal space for everyone. We just need to dismantle the walls of privilege and oppression.”

“Because she’s African. She’s writing from the outside. She doesn’t really feel all the stuff she’s writing about. It’s all quaint and curious to her. So she can write it and get all these accolades and get invited to give talks. If she were African American, she’d just be labelled angry and shunned.”

“Blaine, people lie.” But she said, “I’m sorry.” “Why?” He was looking at her as though she had reached in and torn away his innocence, and for a moment she hated him, this man who ate her apple cores and turned even that into something of a moral act.

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult for you to join? When you go shopping alone at a nice store, do you worry that you will be followed or harassed? When you turn on mainstream TV or open a mainstream newspaper, do you expect to find mostly people of another race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race? When you apply for a bank loan, do you worry that, because of your race, you might be seen as financially unreliable? If you swear, or dress shabbily, do you think that people might say this is because of the bad morals or the poverty or the illiteracy of your race? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as “different” from the majority of your race?

If you criticize the government, do you worry that you might be seen as a cultural outsider? Or that you might be asked to “go back to X,” X being somewhere not in America? If you receive poor service in a nice store and ask to see “the person in charge,” do you expect that this person will be a person of another race? If a traffic cop pulls you over, do you wonder if it is because of your race? If you take a job with an Affirmative Action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? If you want to move to a nice neighborhood, do you worry that you might not be welcome because of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? When you use the “nude” color of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?

“Although if he wins, he will no longer be black, just as Oprah is no longer black, she’s Oprah,” Grace said. “So she can go where black people are loathed and be fine. He’ll no longer be black, he’ll just be Obama.”