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.