Chapter III (Post‐)Independent Women – Romance, Return, and Pan-African Feminism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

Abstract

What presents itself as a subtle balancing act in Open City emerges more formally and overtly in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s best-selling novel Americanah (2013). Here, the ability or desire to voice the different ways in which members of the Black Diaspora view “history through skin color” (Forna) extends well beyond the novel’s themes and also manifests itself in the manner in which the novel appears to straddle two ostensibly opposed genres at once, rendering it a soothingly utopian romance that also aspires to “gritty,” real-life realism. Americanah spans three continents and is set at various locations in Nigeria, England, and the US. It follows the lives of high school sweethearts Ifemelu and Obinze, who, unsatisfied with the dismal situation under Nigerian military rule, make their way to the American East Coast and London, respectively. After undergoing quite different immigrant experiences, both eventually return to Lagos. Told predominantly from the perspective of Ifemelu, who has only recently made the decision to return and nurtures the hope of reuniting with the now estranged Obinze, most of the novel’s seven parts are told in flashbacks that trace her initial difficulties and then steady success in the US. Inserted into the otherwise plot-driven and decidedly romantic narrative are several short passages that tackle the subject of US-American racism from the perspective of an African immigrant and are taken from Ifemelu’s successful blog Raceteenth – or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.