Wednesday, September 25, 2019

AMERICANAH, BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZIE ADICHIE

 I hope you enjoy ‘Americanah’ – which I like to think of as a book about love, immigration, race, hair, and so much more.”-Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

Join our discussion on Monday, October 28, 2019
at 2:00 P.M.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's third novel, Americanah is the story of two Nigerian émigrés who love and lose each other across continents and years. It is a book about leaving, and loneliness and the intersection between class and race, all of which makes it sound rather hard work – unjustly so. It is a book about hair: straight versus afro; and discreet tensions, not just between white Americans and Nigerian immigrants, but between Africans and African Americans, between the light- and dark-skinned, between new and established immigrants, and its frankness – in particular on the subject of gender – has upset some people. "I knew that was coming," says Adichie. "I can't write a book like that and then go, 'Oh my God, they're upset.' But my intention wasn't to upset." She smiles. "It's just that I'm willing to if that's what it takes to write the book." Review from The Guardian