Book Club Guide

Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Race as a social construction encountered abroad
Hair as politics, identity and resistance
The longing that returns migrants home

About this book

Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, moves to the United States for university and spends fifteen years discovering what it means to be Black in America — a category she did not inhabit in Nigeria. Meanwhile Obinze, her first love, tries and fails to build a life in England and returns to Lagos. Adichie's richly observed novel is about race, class and the specific discovery of race-consciousness that comes from leaving home.

Published in 2013, Americanah won the National Book Critics Circle Award and is widely taught as one of the essential novels about race, identity and the African diaspora in the 21st century.

Discussion questions

Ifemelu only 'becomes Black' in America — in Nigeria she was simply herself. What does this reveal about race as a constructed category rather than an intrinsic identity?
Ifemelu's blog posts are inserted throughout the novel. How does this device work — as relief, as essay within fiction, or as something that comments on the limitations of what a novel can say directly?
Hair recurs as a central motif — natural hair, relaxed hair, the social meanings attached to both. What is Adichie saying through this specific choice of symbol?
Both Ifemelu and Obinze end up returning to Nigeria. What does the ending suggest about what cannot be found in America or the UK — and what returns with them that didn't leave?
Adichie has said the novel draws on her own experiences in America. How does knowing this change how you read Ifemelu — as autobiographical or deliberately fictionalised, and does the distinction matter?