Adichie has done it again she has
created another master piece….
Having read
Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun” and having studied it for my Literature
syllabus I fell in love with her books. All these years at school and home I
was only exposed to English books written by English men and women having done
David Copperfield and The Great Gatsby alongside Shakespeare I imagined the
world through a white middle class point of view. Imagining lemonade stalls and
blond hair children became the norm and Asia/Africa didn’t seem as cool as what
was written by Enid Blyton.
Well all
this changed with A/L year Literature syllabus and mainly because of Adichie’s
books. She made everyday life of a person living in the tropics look as
sophisticated as the West. When you read her you simply travel to India and Sri
Lanka although her story is set in Nigeria. We start to deal with everyday issues
such as race and civil wars rather than what the weather is like as spoken
always in British books.
In” Half of
a Yellow Sun” we meet Olanna, Odenigbo, Ugwu and Baby as they face the Biafran
Civil War. In her latest book Americanah we meet Ifemula and Obinze as they
fight for their love in a new Nigeria. The first difference I saw was the how
much Nigeria has changed from 1960’s (Half of a Yellow Sun) to the 2000’s
(Americanah). Nsukka the little university town has gone to ruins in Americanah
unlike how it was portrayed in “Half of a Yellow Sun” where the Odenigbo the
mathematics professor taught in the university there.
Adichie’s
plot has also changed into being more complex in Americanah where a young girl
chases her dream and finds out how America is not what it seems. Race is a huge
issue in Americanah unlike in “Half of a Yellow Sun” where the plot is was
situated in Nigeria where race didn’t matter. We see a lot of racial
discrimination in Americanah where it plays a huge part in the plot. In this
book it’s more to do with love and race than civil war and yes there is a sharp
contrast in cultures especially in South East Asia when compared with Nigeria,
this is mainly because our culture is very conservative.
Richard the
white man from “Half of a Yellow Sun” who wanted to be Biafran and talk Igbo and
also he is also the boyfriend of Kainene is converted into Curt in Americanah
who falls in love with Ifemula and I suspect that this is because of his “white
guilt”
Overall if I
had not read Adichie before and compared her with other writers such as Achebe
then I would have being tricked into thinking it is another writer. Throughout
Americanah we see that Adichie has developed from writing Purple Hibiscus her
first novel to her new and complex novel. Americanah is a must read book for
all those people out there who read for the love of books. Be warned that when
you start reading it you can’t stop because it is addictive.
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