Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

An opportune place for me to start this rant is to refer to an article Daily Nation seeking to explain why Kenya’s literary class has fallen behind Nigeria’s. This was in response to Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun film, when it premiered at the BFI London Film Festival.

http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/weekend/KAMENCU-Why-Nigerians-are-miles-ahead-of-our-writers/-/1220/2047220/-/format/xhtml/-/kuaikh/-/index.html

A previous article in the same daily was written when the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/art-culture/Chimamanda-reflects-on-her-civil-war-novel-and-the-movie/-/1954194/2031320/-/format/xhtml/-/ay0k6h/-/index.html

Surprisingly for my countrymen, no comments were made to these two articles nor many others on matters literary.   This surprised me because Kenyans of all schools of thought always have something to say on a topic – no matter how mundane.

Americanah is indeed my fourth book by Adichie having read Purple Hibiscus, Half Of A Yellow Sun and This Thing Around My Neck (short stories).   I agree in toto on the danger of a one sided story and the necessity of the story of the hunt to be told from the perspective of the lions lest I only learn of the bravery of the hunters.  Since the good old days of the African Writers Series, I still seek out African writers and whine about the dearth of books by Africans.   As Kenya introduces “Nyumba Kumi” an initiative on knowing your neighbour a good place to start would be a book club where neighbours explore African Writers instead of concentrating only on the EPL or Politics.

Americanah brought so many memories to mind, some of which I would of course be too ashamed to pen down for all and sundry to gloat upon.

1.       If I were to summarise the thrust of Americanah, I would say it was about the life of Nigerians who have pursued a better life abroad mostly in the USA where Ifemelu and some others ended but also in the UK where Obinze and others experimented.  (It is of course more than that since it articulates many other themes interwoven around the stories of Obinze & Ifemelu). The challenges of applying for a VISA, of choicelessness, of illegal and legal immigration, of failure & success, of struggle & triumph in foreign lands, and ultimately the story of nostalgia. Americanah is the name given to those who return home from their sojourn with or without the accents to boot to participate in a modern Nigeria.  This surely is the story of Africans in general…Of Africanah! As I read this book, I could not help wishing for an Africa whose citizens did not feel the need to run away from. That Africans need not die as they traversed Oceans seeking a better life in other lands not because they were adventurous (like Vasco da Gama) but because they had no choice.  An Africa where Africans were proud to remain because they were hopeful.  An Africa whose citizens need not be discriminated against in foreign lands.  An Africa that did not lose her better brains to foreign lands when they were needed at home where they could thrive and develop.  When I thought of Ifemelu’s nostalgia,  I could not help wondering whether this was an agenda that the African Union should pursue.

2.       There was a recent “letter” by one Biko to diaspora Kenyans who – when then returned home – assumed that the world revolved around them. This letter upset many of my diaspora friends who responded with a lot of bile.  How I wish that Biko or those who rebutted may have turned this into a short story. In Americanah, Ifemelu joins a club of Nigerpolitans upon her return to her homeland who – although they love their homeland – suffer from the mentality of “things back home”.  I could not help musing what the reaction of my friends to the depiction of Ifemelu & her group of returnees would be.

3.       MF posted on FB that Naija men had raised the bar on what a woman expected from her man.  Her post & the comments of the women who responded were hilarious. The post was in response to the Emmy Kosgei nuptials. As if in tow, there was a Naija nite at Carnivore that was sure to be filled by many a Kenyan lass in search of a Naija man to fawn upon them.  Perhaps many of the lasses felt that Rev Kathy Kiuna is missing this important need in her sermons on marital bliss. This post could be fodder for a chapter in a book.

4.       I was regaled by Ifemelu’s tales of university life, exes and nicknames.  How similar to the same tales that one could spin about life in one of our many campuses & colleges. My phonebook is replete with nicknames – “VB”, “HB”, “S” etc.  A friend who recently browsed my phone was appalled by their nickname & wondered why this was necessary.  I quipped that it added fun to my otherwise dull existence.  Nicknames aren’t novel afterall since Ifemelu referred to Obinze as “Ceiling” whereas his friends referred to him as “The Zed”.  Perhaps I could spin a tale on some of those nicknames were I be tempted to write a book.

5.       Churches and those who attend them are similar irrespective of the country.  Some of the columns I read when bored are on The East African Standard’s Crazy Monday where I am bound to be regaled by an item concerning the goings on in one church or other. JM recently quipped that religion meant different things to different people and there was more than met the cursory glance.  On a recent visit to Kenya, she was appalled by the new church syndrome and wondered “what has happened to the church the way I knew it in this country? what is this I am seeing on TV called “Kubamba”?. Her post and the responses from her FB friends was something akin to the stories in Adichie’s Americanah.

6.       Nigerians have such beautiful names and are not ashamed to use them.  I write this from a conference in China and I realise that most Africans have adopted foreign names. I have always wondered what it was about Africans that made us think that our names are worse than those from foreign lands. What is it about Moira,  Jean,  Ted, Olivia, Maureen, Nancy, Hillary, Kenneth, Wendy, Richard & the myriad of names  that exist in my immediate family that make them more interesting that the names of our ancestors?  In protest, I used my African name in the name tag & had that translated into Chinese characters.

As these thoughts and many more flooded my mind, I figured that if Adichie could write about modern day Nigeria and the experience of Nigerians in foreign lands, so could we.  Well at least for now my countrymen & women can wax lyrical about Barack Obama who carries our genes and sits on the White House ‘throne’, Wangari Maathai of the Nobel Peace Prize, Lupita Nyong’o – she of the “12 years a slave”, Victor Wanyama who kicks the ball for Southampton and the men & women who win medals running for Kenya. 

As fate would have it…one cannot have it all and besides as BM says one in every four Africans is Nigerian. As for me, I am bound to be reading Adichie for years to come.

Anne Frank - The Diary Of A Young Girl

I am at a loss on where to begin this rant that can do justice to the gem of a book.   Let me begin by quoting Philip Roth (an American writer of Gaelic & Jewish descent):- "To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading".  It has taken me many days and weeks to get through Anne's diary - not because it did not grip my imagination but because I had too many distractions. In that regard, I lost some of my focus.

 

Let me start at the beginning. Many years ago, in my youth - when playing was all I cared for - my father waxed lyrical about Anne Frank.  I presuppose like me, he marvelled about how a girl so young could write a diary so poignant.  I read so many books from my father's library but I steered clear of The Diary Of A Young Girl because subconsciously, I was afraid that I would fall short of the traits that endeared Anne to my father.   I never thought of her until recently a friend of mine of the opposite gender was shocked that I too keep a diary/journal on and off where I jot my deepest thoughts.  He did not - for the life of him - understand why one would want to write anything down. This conversation led me to exorcise Anne Frank from the recesses of my mind and led me to buy her book in an attempt to understand why anyone would want to do this.

 

Anne's comment at the beginning of her diary helped me appreciate why anyone would want to keep a diary.  She begins "I hope I will be able to confide everything in you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support".  Many years ago, I encouraged my kids - as my father had - to always keep a journal so that they would not forget their experiences.  Unlike Facebook, Blogs or Social Media, a diary is very private & intimate - it is a place where you write your things and hope that someone chancing upon your diary will have the decency to understand that a diary is not for public consumption. 

 

The Diary Of A Young Girl is written over a two year period  amidst the daily grind of hiding in an annexe together with other families. It nonetheless, is written with lots of whit and humour. For me, it is by & large the story of growing up because it is during our adolescence that we make leaps from being children to being young adults. It is a story of hope because Anne always wrote as though she would survive the events of the time and publish her diary.   She never really despaired that perchance she would not live to adulthood.   The diary is also the story of comfort & friendship - albeit intimacy with an inanimate object like a diary - because Anne knew that come what may, she always had her diary to go back to. 

 

I have highlighted so many passages in The Diary Of A Young Girl. I would have liked Anne because despite the fact that we are born so many years apart we 'suffer' the same emotional insecurities. Anne had to live under the shadow of her older sister Margot whom she loved, who she was bench marked against but to whose standards she felt she could never really measure. Anne suffered an identity crisis...She wanted to be herself and to be loved for who she was just as she was.

 

Oh Anne. I smiled when I read:-  "I argued that talking is a female trait and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but that I would never be able to cure myself of the habit, since my mother talked as much as I did, if not more, and that there's not much you can do about inherited traits".   When my school teachers wrote that I was a 'noise maker' in my school reports, my mother told me not to worry about it because she too had suffered the same comment from Mrs Bruce - her headmistress.  My saving grace was that my mother understood that I could not do much about my chatting...well as long this was accompanied by good grades.

 

Amazingly Anne had a good appreciation about the world around her. I guess any child would if they lived through a war. Instead of skipping, playing dodge the ball or with dolls she analysed the situation around her in a way that many people in this day & age would not.

 

I would have loved Anne...She says to her diary that she has a lot of self knowledge. She understands her strengths & weaknesses and thinks about them objectively. She does not suffer from delusions of grandeur. But I wonder whether she was too serious about life even for a girl living in an annexe with & other people day in day out.

 

The Diary Of A Young Girl finishes rather abruptly as the people in the annexe are discovered by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps.  The post scriptum is a sad one because everyone perishes except Anne's dad who lives to publish Anne's diary.

 

I should have read The Diary Of A Young Girl when I was younger.  My father should have insisted on it. But then I am sure he was fighting his own demons and did not have the energy to force me into reading.  I believe that I might have become the better for it.