Americanah

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, Fiction
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024

"A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected"--Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A wonderful book, a fresh perspective submitted by aunal on December 10, 2014, 4:27pm Adichie zoomed to the top of my favorite writers list when I read "Half of a Yellow Sun". -
"Americanah" has only increased my admiration for this gifted author. Her books are immensely readable, and, fairly quickly, the reader feels the protagonists are personal friends, understands their emotions, their experiences, their perspectives...
Yet her narratives are always thought-provoking; in "Americanah" she examines racism in the USA through the eyes of a non-African-American, ie an African living in the US.

beautiful and poignant achievement in fiction writing submitted by kelsco2016 on June 17, 2016, 9:58pm Americanah is a beautiful and poignant achievement in fiction writing, and is a powerful reading experience deserving of the praise it received in the press. Starring Ifemelu, a Nigerian girl who moves to America, Adichie incorporates thoughts and comments on culture and race in America from both the inside and the outside, and inhabits the space between belonging to two countries. Adichie’s literary voice, too, is on display here, with her metaphors – “strenuous loyalty,” “the cold was a weightless menace,” the “oppressive lethargy of choicelessness,” “caged in the airlessness of their parents’ immigrant aspirations.” Ifemelu’s observations, too, were delightful; identifying with her throughout the book was a pleasure.

• “Her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window looking out.”
• “She was lighter and leaner; she was Curt’s Girlfriends, a role she slipped into as into a favorite, flattering dress.”
• “He was so impressed by what I owned, and I just felt as if my life had become this layer of pretension after pretension and I started to get sentimental about the past.”

happy to have found this author! submitted by Sunny29 on June 21, 2016, 11:58am I was hooked by page 2, simply by Adichie's writing style and under current of humor and cynicism. This is an excellent novel that encourages (forces?!) you to look at the subtleties of race in America, and the difference between "African Blacks" and "Non-African Blacks"

Astouding Novel submitted by Meginator on July 13, 2017, 12:32pm What I appreciated most about "Americanah" is the way that it gripped me without my recognizing it or, in retrospect, ever quite realizing why: the novel immediately had me hooked and I had no choice but to read on. Adichie has a way of creating compelling characters who immediately jump to life; I feel like I would recognize Ifemelu or Obinze if I saw them on the street, and both grow and change realistically as their stories develop. The book's criticisms of U.S. attitudes toward race, immigration, poverty, and other issues are searing yet subtle; by giving us a person to sympathize with, Adichie forces readers to confront our own assumptions and possible complicity in the injustices she describes. The prose is lush but never indulgent, and everything, from the streets of Lagos to Ifemelu's blog posts, come to vivid life throughout the book. "Americanah" is a transformative and (sadly) necessary work that challenges readers while inviting them into Ifemelu's and Obinze's perhaps unfamiliar lives.

Wow submitted by KOH on August 28, 2017, 7:15pm Wonderful novel!

love the novel so much submitted by hsucc on August 15, 2018, 9:56am An incredibly readable and rich tapestry of Nigerian and American life. Can't put it down before finish reading it!

I know why people loved this, but it didn't do much for me submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 21, 2019, 10:58pm 3/5 stars. I understand that this book has been enormously popular and received rave reviews. It didn’t do much for me, and I know why.

What I loved about _Americanah_ is the cultural perspective. It’s absolutely brilliant about voicing a Nigerian immigrant’s experience of the United States, and of being Black in America while not being African American. It is insightful, poignant, wry, funny, painful, and brilliant. At times it was also pedantic and lecturing, but I could live with that for the rest.

What made it hard for me to love the book was that I didn’t find there to be enough *story* to the characters. For me, a story is where “something happens, and so something changes.” Ifemelu repeatedly has things happened TO her, and other than the one major decision to return to Nigeria (which we hear about at the beginning and then don’t encounter again until very far into the book), almost everything is something that she is the mostly passive recipient of. I don’t find that to be a compelling story. I want to know about someone who made a choice and then lived with or experienced the consequences of that choice. I suppose you could say that she passively ended up in the US and then all of the interesting cultural perspective is the consequence of that, but again, it is mostly passive observation, passive acquiescence, passive floating along in her own life.

And I simply never find that to be a compelling reason to read or have written a book.

New perspectives on race in America submitted by alexmichaelp on July 15, 2019, 12:49pm I highly recommend. Not only is Adichie an extremely skilled writer, but "Americanah" delights in giving its readers a nuanced, heterogeneous view on racialization in America. As a Nigerian immigrant, the main character struggles to understand her place in an American society that demands on seeing "race" through a bifurcated lens: black-or-white. Adichie complicates this worldview without resolving it. She also touches on issues of sexism and refugee conflict.

A worthwhile & meaningful read submitted by fenechm on August 18, 2019, 8:09pm Good writing, important concepts

Incredible! submitted by kellendatta on August 10, 2020, 2:33pm What a fantastic, thought provoking novel. A fresh perspective of understanding race in America, immigration, self-perception, and so much more. A page turner, despite the length. I encourage everyone to read this book.

So worth the time submitted by clk.9123 on August 22, 2022, 7:38pm Americanah may seem like a long and daunting book but it is so worth the read. It is not Chimamanda’s first book, but it’s a good entry point to her work that will have you immediately seeking out her other novels.

Loved it submitted by berkleya on July 26, 2023, 8:13am Like a romance novel with so much more!