Americanah by Adichie Ngozi Chimamanda is a novel written by an immigrant for people from all different backgrounds. That is what novels are for, really books of all shapes and sizes. Books tell a story, but they teach a lesson within the midst of the story for everyone. Books not only expand our imagination, but our knowledge by making us read in order to progress within the depth of the mind of the author. I’ve read books such as Russian Roulette and A Man Called Ove that have had a very complicated turn of events. Books allow you to “showcase your knowledge and experience and serves as a focal point to build your brand, a platform to stand on while you grow your audience” (GreenLeaf). Within all of those words, there is always a message. Now it may sound cliché to you, me saying that every story has a plot and a message, but that’s the truth. Every book has a plot to lead up to a major turning point which can be the moral of the story or the message.
Now in regards to Americanah, this book has a lot to offer. The book is filled with many subjects that people now get offended easily by because they don’t like hearing some talk about it. Race, gender, and immigration are a few of the topics that were expressed in the novel. Race was the biggest topic in Americanah and Adichie did a phenomenal job deconstructing it. Adichie expressed race in a variety of quotes and events that didn’t make it seem as if she was being redundant like me. In Americanah, Adichie deconstructs race well and most of Adichie’s break down of race is focused mostly inside of the United States. However, her analysis has to with race everywhere. The history of race, how different people are affected by race, how people act because of race, who is on top, and how people discriminate on people of their own race are all what Adichie describes in the novel. “But race is not biology; race is sociology. Race is not
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genotype; race is phenotype. Race matters because of racism. And racism is absurd because it’s about how you look. Not about the blood you have. It’s about the shade of your skin and the shape of your nose and the kink of your hair. Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass had white fathers. Imagine them saying they were not black” (Adichie 419). This quote exposes the truth of race; that it is only another barrier that us as humans have put up to separate the people that feel as if they are on top and that race only matters because of racism. “‘In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era’” (390). Adichie includes this quote to explain the thoughts of race here in the United States and in most of the world. There aren’t as many people willing to express their atrocious way of viewing race the way that people back then expressed themselves; they do it mostly in their thoughts.
“People often associate racism with acts of abuse or harassment. However, it doesn’t need to involve violent or intimidating behaviour. Take racial name-calling and jokes.” (AustralianHumanRightsCommision). This quote devises that racism doesn’t have to be out in the open, it can be revealed in a hidden manner which is what Adichie does well in explaining and uses it to break down race. There are plenty of examples in Americanah where a person, usually a white American, would say a statement or a joke that was lowkey racist, but if the characters would say anything, they were casted out. Might be because this went against their ignorant ideas or that someone just confronted them for the first time. People get this ignorance from hearing one statement made by another person that they trust and not investigating further to see if what was said actually makes sense. I’m probably not alone when I say their ignorance
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is horrendous, like open your eyes! Educate yourself because you look stupid making comments that don’t even make sense.
I have been faced with many people similar to those described and it isn’t easy telling someone nicely that you don’t speak Mexican and that you aren’t Spanish. If I were to go up to a white person and ask them if they speak white, they would automatically get offended and call me ignorant or any other name that describes what I look like calling them that. The immigration occurring here in the United States brings comments like, “Go back to your country, you don’t belong here, this is America, so speak english.” All people here came from an immigrant family and the United States doesn’t have an official language, so anyone can speak in whatever language they would like. Adichie talks about race in a manner that I haven’t ever read before. She talks about it openly, talks about it in different aspects, like the history of it, and she writes it so that it fits with her plot in the story. She brought up points that are eye opening even for me. Saying that, “Race only matters because of racism,” is true. In a perfect world, the color of someone’s skin would be the least on our minds, but it haunts the minds of many in our world. The primary cause of racism is unawareness, but by spreading background knowledge about race to the public, Adichie shows that even though racism can be taught, it can be prevented by the spread of knowledge. By talking about race openly, Adichie relates to the reader, grabs their attention and puts much needed information to those that are ignorant when it comes to race.
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Works Cited
Adichie, Ngozi, Chimamanda. Americanah. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
Martin, Philip. Janefriedman. The Hot Sheet, 2011, http://www.janefriedman.com/what-is-a-story/
Accessed 05 Dec. 2018
Racism. It stops with me. AustralianHumanRightsCommsion https://itstopswithme.humanrights.gov.au/about-racism
Accessed 17 Dec. 2018
GreenLeafBookgroup. GreenLeafBookGroupPress, https://greenleafbookgroup.com/learning.
Accessed 13 Dec. 2018
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