About Americanah : A story for those of us in the African Diaspora

5 minute read

According to the DNA checking website, 23andme, I have a 58.9% Sub-Saharan Africa ancestry with 40.7% West African and a ‘whopping’ 4.9% Nigerian. Before and after receiving these results, I felt very little connection to Africa. I am from the Dominican Republic, a country that is famously known for its struggles and its people who often refuses to recognise their African roots and their obvious blackness. And so, I grew up completely unaware of my African roots, aside from my black skin and kinky hair.

To me, Nigeria, and the rest of the African countries, were only far-away places with poverty and civil conflicts. Later in my life, after I moved to Europe, I felt it was almost impossible to relate to Africans. My African friends and I had, of course, similar culture: the food, the traditions, even the physical reactions to things; at times impossible to tell apart, but my previous upbringing would somehow push me to see myself as a separate ‘race’.

And then, I stumble upon Americanah! The novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie narrates the story of Nigerian woman Ifemelu and her experiences before, during and after she emigrates to the United States, and subsequently returns to Nigeria 13 years later. At first, it doesn’t sound like I, a Dominican migrant who moved to Europe, and who, so far, has no plans to return home, has much in common with the novel’s protagonist, but I found myself smiling at every turn when she made observations about her middle-class life in Nigeria; her first experiences with Americans and consequentially with race; her struggles to find a job and to adapt to a completely different culture.

In the story, Ifemelu starts a blog, is forced to do some unsavoury jobs that left her ashamed and traumatised, and eventually manages to find her way to a decent life in the U.S. whilst wishing to return to Nigeria.

Americanah is an amazing story that needs to be read by every single POC migrant living in the first world. The story can allow you to connect with the part of your identity that has been kept hidden perhaps to adapt to a society that will always see you as a foreigner.

Ifemelu reflects on how important race is in the United States, how it follows every conversation and how her friends, both black and white, have often incredibly different opinions while thinking their ideas are the “right ones”. My experience felt so similar, from the moment I arrived, I was suddenly a black woman; a quality I never really focused on in the Dominican Republic where I would go only as far as defining the level of darkness of my skin, while still not admitting to being black. Confusing I know.

While studying in the Netherlands, I was singled out by another migrant to be his best friend… he was drawn by my skin colour before he even knew who I was. We would meet almost twice a week for drinks or a chat. The irony of this is that that same colour that attracted him to me ended our friendship after he stated my “race” was beneath his as an Indian man. It was my first experience with racism, and it wasn’t even from a white person!

Throughout the novel Ifemelu discovers her love of natural hair, writing in her blog first how she hated her short little afro curls, missing the femininity that the long locks of weaves and braids gave her and eventually loving the freedom and appreciating the beauty of her afro. At the time, she’s dating a white rich American that is obsessed with her skin and hair, and she reflects in her internal monologue, how he doesn’t really understand her. He tries but fails to see, from his world of white privilege, what it means to be her. I found her struggle incredibly familiar and funny.

We had to cross an ocean, live in a different world, and learn to love ourselves, tearing down the self-hate POC have internally adopted after years of colonisation, slavery and redlining before we could find and embrace our identity. The trip, leaving our families and childhood friends behind, often brings consequences that never truly disappear.

She realises how irrelevant, we, the migrants become to those back home. Reading her observations of that irrelevance was like a cold shower. Their lives continue, their jobs, relationships and the years go by. At one point, we are only a footnote - the visitor that doesn’t really belong anywhere. You are no longer really missed, and although everyone makes time to see you at least once, while you are visiting, their lives and decisions have nothing to do with you. You are just a tourist who happens to be related to them.

There are many more moments in the book that I or any POC migrant can relate to. The distrust store attendants have towards you, the idea of getting a job just because you are black, or being rejected exactly for the same reason. How you must make sure your racist story doesn’t portrait you as bitter to your white friends because if you are angry, you will get no sympathy. How some friends insist on agreeing with everything about race you bring up as if expressing their real views will destroy their friendship with you. And more importantly her nostalgia for and desire to return to Nigeria; the initial shock and finally how she rediscovers and learns to love the city that saw her grow and the country that made her who she is.

The end of the book brought a wave of nostalgia within which I almost drowned.

I had to admit how I miss the only place where I am not a foreigner, but just Yahaira. It’s been 20 years since I left, and the changes I have missed out on are noticeable in every visit. I know one day, in the far future, I will return, and thanks to Americanah, I believe it will be okay.

Of course, I have only scraped the surface of Americanah here; the novel has a beautiful romance between Ifemelu and fellow Nigerian, Obinze - a romance that brings back thoughts of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez, where distance and time did nothing to tame the fire the lovers felt. Ngozi Adichie includes the issues of migration to both Europe and America; the differences between living in the UK and in the US as a black person; how different the cultures of the many African diasporas and those living in Africa can be and how the West has influenced many of these cultures.

With all this richness, Americanah is absolutely one to read.

Yahaira L Reyes, March 2021