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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
(2014, Anchor Books)
---YouTube
Dramatic Recitation
https://youtube.com/shorts/sWL7Jzt5mc4?feature=share
(Musical Actor. Eun-young Ko)
396 p.
“It’s different for me and I think it’s because I’m from the Third World,” she said. “To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.”
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13 p.
Ifemelu fanned herself with a magazine. “It’s so hot,” she said. At least, these women would not say to her “You’re hot? But you’re from Africa!”
20 p.
Aisha reminded her of what Aunty Uju had said, when she finally accepted that Ifemelu was serious about moving back―Will you be able to cope?―and the suggestion, that she was somehow irrevocably altered by America, had grown thorns on her skin. Her parents, too, seemed to think that she might not be able to “cope” with Nigeria.
139 p.
She ached for the lives they showed, lives full of bliss, where all problems had sparkling solutions in shampoos and cars and packaged foods, and in her mind they became the real America, the America she would only see when she moved to school in the autumn.
159 p.
“That’s a pretty accent. Where are you from?”
“Nigeria.”
“Nigeria. Isn’t there a war going on there?”
“No.”
“Can I see your ID?” the woman asked, and then, glancing at the license, added, “How do you pronounce your name again?”
“Ifemelu”
“What?”
171 p.
Here, Ifemelu felt a gentle, swaying sense of renewal. Here, she did not have to explain herself.
173 p.
Later, as Ifemelu left the meeting, she thought of Dike, wondered which he would go to in college, whether ASA or BSU, and what he would be considered, whether American African or African American. He would have to choose what he was, or rather, what he was would be chosen for him.
*ASA : African Students Association / BSU : Black Student Union
251 p.
“But look how pretty it is. Wow, girl, you’ve got the white-girl swing!”
Her hair was hanging down rather than standing up, straight and sleek, parted at the side and curving to a slight bob at her chin. The verve was gone. She did not recognize herself. She left the salon almost mournfully; while the hairdresser had flat-ironed the ends, the smell of burning, of something organic dying which should not have died, had made her feel a sense of loss.
341 p.
Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.
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