Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Reading Challenge Category: a book by an author of a different race, ethnicity, or religion than your own

Official Book Blurb:

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?

My Thoughts:

This wasn’t what I’d expected. When I first read the blurb, I thought they had been separated because they had to be. That they had been torn away by circumstances, so I had expected agony and heartache by the separation, but they chose to be separated. I suppose the situation with the strikes at the university forced their hand, but it wasn’t as life-threatening as I had expected.
However, once I got used to reading about a completely different way of life and struggles from my own, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I was rooting for them to get back together in the end (even though I shouldn’t have been because of his circumstances!).
The book does end very abruptly, though, I kept looking at the percentage left, and I only had 2%. I felt like so much more still needed to be told, but it didn’t it just ended.
After such a long story and such detail, I felt a little robbed.
I learnt a lot from this book, and it opened my eyes to a different way of life and various troubles and obstacles that people from different race, ethnicities and religions to my own have to overcome and endure on a day to day basis. I, especially, learnt a lot about ‘kinky’ hair, I’ve often wondered “why can’t it just be straightened, hair straighteners can do anything?” well now I know it’s not that simple!!!

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