This book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is every bit as good as everyone says it is.
I don’t even know what I would say it’s about. I found it on a list of books about migrating to America, and it is certainly about that. But it’s also a love story. It’s about the places you call home and why. It’s about finding the people who get you. It’s about finding your identity. It’s a very human story and I loved every bit of it.
The main character, Ifemelu, moves from Nigeria to America as a college student. The professors in Nigeria go on strike so often and for so long, that the students hardly get a chance to learn anything so Ifemelu gets a student visa to study in America, with plans for her boyfriend, Obinze, to follow.
That doesn’t quite work out.
I won’t go into details, but something happens to make Ifemelu stop communicating with Obinze. No explanation, she just completely cuts him off. It hurts her almost as much as it hurts him, and by the time she’s realized her mistake, it’s too late.
Obinze is unable to get an American visa. He sneaks into England and works there under someone else’s name for a while, but he gets found out and then deported back to Nigeria, where he eventually makes the right connections and becomes fabulously wealthy. Since Ifemelu isn’t talking to him any more, he marries a beautiful, vapid woman and they have a daughter together.
Ifemelu dates a couple American guys, gets a job, and then starts writing a blog about race called Raceteenth or Various Observations about American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. It’s a hugely successful blog that gets her lots of money and attention.
But after a while, she gets bored. She gets a fellowship at Princeton, but she starts to get homesick and wonder what she’s doing here. So she breaks up with her boyfriend and moves back to Nigeria.
Although Ifemelu and Obinze are back in contact by this point, she doesn’t tell him right away that she’s back in Nigeria. When she finally does tell him, they have some obvious struggles with their relationship. Their feelings for each other haven’t changed, but he’s married, so that’s something they have to deal with and I won’t spoil the ending. I’m not usually one to stay up late to finish a book, but I did read until well past my bedtime finishing this one.
I had so many feelings about this book, I don’t even know where to start. Of course, as a book that deals largely with an immigrant trying to make her way in America, it points out a lot of the idiosyncrasies of American culture and I appreciated each and every one of them: the way we talk, our tendency to eat bread with lunch (apparently Nigerians don’t), and the natives who will disparage their own country, but can’t stand it when a foreigner does (guilty).
I also loved Ifemelu. She’s smart and sassy and I want to be friends with her.
My one complaint about the book is I think some things got skipped in favor of pacing. Ifemelu got a job as a babysitter when she was in college. We heard about how she got her new job after graduating from college, but the graduation itself was completely ignored and there was no mention of what happened when she stopped working for that family. Did she turn in her notice? Were the kids upset? Did they throw her a going away party? I felt like I lost out because I wanted a chance to say goodbye to those characters and I never got to.
There’s also a section, shortly after Ifemelu moves to America, when she’s struggling to find a job and pay her bills, that she suffers from depression. She’s in denial because she thinks depression is something invented by Westerners. She says it’s not that they don’t have a different name for it in Nigeria, it’s that it just doesn’t happen in Nigeria. But before she moved to America, her dad went through a period of being unemployed, too, and he certainly showed signs of being depressed after a few unsuccessful months of job hunting (not leaving the apartment, not answering the door, etc.).
But don’t let that discourage you from reading this wonderful, fantabulous book! It’s amazing and I already miss all the characters!
What did you guys read this week? Anything that lived up to your expectations (or didn’t)? I want to hear all about it!
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