This is a beautiful book that gets you asking why we treat people differently for the sake of differences.
The very frank main character, Ifemelu, goes through life just trying to do what we all do: get her education and a job but because of the political unrest in Nigeria at the time, she moves to America to study at university. It's when she gets to America that Ifemelu realizes something: she's black.
Black people aren't black in Africa; they're black when they leave it.
This concept has stuck with me even though I finished reading the book a good couple of days ago. None of us are anything until we go to a place where what we are is a minority. The same is true for anything you can think of. A Scandinavian with bright blonde hair, isn't bright blonde until they go to a Mediterranean country. I don't mean to make racism sound this simple but I wanted to make this a little easier for others, including myself to understand. I grew up in Britain where racism is not as prominent as in America and so Ifelmelu's main plight was something I had to adapt to in order to fully understand.
Adichie reaches into the heart of people and puts their faults on display. People see the differences first. Not only that but people adapt so that their own differences are no longer an issue and then pick on others' differences. She shows this through a character named Emenike, who spends his whole life making up for what he believes to be his faults and once he reaches a position where he is comfortable, he turns the mirror to others around him.
People need to find something wrong or differences in other people in order to feel that they are superior. This is racism... Racism is the need to believe that you are better than someone because your skin is different colour. Racism is narcissism. I really wonder when humans as a species will realize we are all the same. I really wonder because I don't believe it is possible. I hope against hope that it will happen but it won't because people are egotistical. They need to know that they are better. I'm not even sure better is the right word but I believe "good enough" would suit us more. People need to know that they are good enough to fit in with society and know that their place in it is not threatened.
Anyway... I don't mean to rant.
*Spoiler Alarm ON*
Another good criticism of society is Obinze. We all love Obinze. He's the sweet, gentle, intelligent boyfriend back home that Ifemelu loves but also takes for granted. That is until life beats him. Life breaks him, it tears him down and it leaves him depressed and deported back to Nigeria. So he says "Now what?" and finds himself in real estate and a happy chappy in a nappy and a large bank account. "Now what?" there's a girl living with him asking what he plans to do about their relationship... so he might as well marry her and then of course have a child. For those of you who haven't read the book, don't hate him because Ifemelu has already deserted his butt a looong time ago. So after all this is done Ifemelu decides to mess everything up by coming home. I say mess everything up but I don't really mean it. Ifemelu messed everything up the day she stopped calling Obinze but that's for another paragraph. Obzine gets caught up in the flow of life. He looses himself to others' expectations. He gets trapped by responsibilities he should have thought harder about while taking them on.
But don't we all?
*Spoiler Alarm OFF*
We go to university because it's expected of us. For those of you in countries like the States you get into serious debt that you'll be lucky to finish off paying by the time you're 30. We eat crap because we can't afford to buy healthy food because we go to school. We try to get a job when we graduate so we can pay off what we owe, get a house, a car, savings... We go to cafes with our friends on the weekend to take pictures and selfies so that we can put them on social media to impress people we don't even care about because that's what society expects us to do. I look around me and see couples that shouldn't have married. They are miserable and have lost communication with each other. It's not because they never loved each other or the world tore them apart but because they probably decided to marry because it was the next step. They had reached the age and that point in their relationship when there was nothing else to do but get married, or they were together for so long that they couldn't be bothered to explain to those around them the reasons for breaking up so they went with it.
I live in Turkey at the moment and girls do what girls do and boys do what boys do because it is expected of them. Expectations don't mix and almost always come back to building a family of their own.
Ifemelu's parents are perfect. They are perfect because they are two poles of society. Her mother is religious but why? Because if she prays enough for this or prays enough for that God will give her a new car or a new house or send her daughter to America so she can boast about it to her neighbours. Religion shouldn't be about gain; it should be about the love between you and God (or whomever you believe in). Her father... I really liked her father because I believe everyone has had someone like him in their lives. As a child she admired him, she believed he was intelligent and strong but as she grew up she realized that his accent was put on, his language forced to sound like he knew what he was talking about and his whole life was bent around a need to prove that he was smarter than the average Joe. I think we have all felt the disappointment of realizing the person who you took as your role model isn't necessarily all you believed they were. This doesn't mean that you don't love them anymore but that you have grown up. You are now looking at the world and everyone around you without those rosy pink glasses.
But now we come to Ifemelu. I think those who have read the book will agree with me when I say she helps you get things off your chest. She's so frank that it's not her foot in her mouth but yours and she's helping you fit the other one in. Ifemelu is most of us. She's indecisive and she makes one of the biggest changes in her life because Obinze told her it was a good idea. Haven't we all done this before? I allowed myself to be talked into changing degrees in University. I allowed myself to be talked into a job and out of one. We all do it. We talk and we are talked to. Like Ifemelu we decide things on a whim and we sometimes go with it and we sometimes wait for the idea to ferment and then run off into the distance. And we struggle. We struggle and struggle and we do it alone. Just as Ifemelu, when we need help the most we close ourselves up in our rooms and cut away the things that could actually help us because we are miserable and we want to feel it.
When I was reading I got the feeling that Ifemelu was just going with the flow. She lived with the flow and was just waiting to see where it took her. I won't speak for everyone but I know that's how I live. I make plans and I'm pretty good at keeping them but I have no goal or target I'm working for or towards. I know what I want to be when I graduate but I have no idea where I'll be when I do. Ifemelu had no dreams of grandeur or even any idea of what she wanted to be or do. I don't think most people do either. I don't think people who have already retired know what they want to be or do...
I enjoyed this book and I have noticed a change in the way I see things. I think it's silly to say "I'm not racist. Skin colour is not important. I don't even notice." Everyone at some point notices. Do you notice what colour dog your neighbour has? Do you notice what colour car is parked next to yours? Do you notice when someone has a sun tan? Colour is a part of life. You notice. We all notice. It's when you make it an issue that there is a problem. So for myself I will say that I'm someone who does not initially go "Oh, that person's black!" but after reading this book I do notice sooner than I would have before. I don't mean this in a bad way. I didn't have many if any real black friends growing up so I wan't aware of the differences between our bodies. I didn't know that black hair was curly. I didn't know you could bleach skin. Now I see black celebrities and I wonder why their hair is straight and blonde or even more strange, why their blonde hair was straightened and then curled into loose ringlets again... I understand that everyone is free to do what they want with their hair but after reading this book I wished I could see Beyonce all natural and flicking her curls back in a Loreal advert.
I love the constant reminder in this book: Be yourself.
Be yourselves guys!
The books jumps time periods throughout most of it and I will admit that at some point I just wanted to get back to the present and find out what was going on but this is the only negative thing I can say about this book.
Adichie warns us of the dangers of a one track story in her TED Talks speech. She discusses judging people and then sticking with our judgment no matter what. I agree with her. We should all give people the opportunity to be who they are without putting them in a box and labeling them. It is human nature to judge but we should be able to reach beyond that.
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