While "Yellow Sun" was situated in Nigeria, this book brings us from Nigeria to the United States, and to the United Kingdom, and back. Through the complicated, interwoven lives we follow in this novel, we encounter multiple, interwoven themes. If they are presented well, human rights issues are complicated, and so are good novels! Just like issues of human rights and women's rights, Americanah is not about "one thing": as Laura Pearson noted in her review, the main character (Ifemelu) in the novel points this out for us in a specific scene in the book. While she is in a beauty salon getting her hair done, Ifemelu is irritated by an attempt at conversation: someone asks her what the novel she was reading was about (groan, it's a novel... it's about a lot of things, how can I possible summarize it for you... is the feeling). Americanah, Pearson notes, is too complicated to summarize, just like Ifemelu's novel: it "covers race, identity, relationships, community, politics, privilege, language, hair, ethnocentrism, migration, intimacy, estrangement, blogging, books and Barack Obama". But it is exciting and challenging to read (a good thing, really!).
So if women's rights are about many things (as well as complicated and interwoven), where are they in this book? Here are a few:
- The novel alludes to the military dictatorships in Nigeria's past, and we encounter the ripple effects of those politics in Ifemelu's Auntie Uju, and her relationship with 'the General'. Auntie Uju's story uncovers the multiple levels of women's participation in politics, and the ways that coups and political unrest can upend everyday women's lives, partly because (all over the world) women's access to legal and civil protection is lacking. When it comes to marriage, common-law relationships, divorce, inheritance, property rights, vulnerability to violence, standards for sexual behavior, this short story illustrates many complications that women must often negotiate from a place of insecurity. Laws are constantly changing, but protections for women lag behind in general and even when it comes to basic human rights such as freedom from violence, when it comes to mistresses, their applicability are still subject to debate.
- In England, Ifemelu's boyfriend from college in Nigeria confronts the dangers of looking for work as an illegal immigrant, including extortion. Ifemelu has her own dangers to confront in that arena in the United States, where her experience is framed by a moment of sexual exploitation: a familiar and disturbing effect of the insecurity inherent in immigrant populations all over the world (especially but not only for women migrants).
- The divisions of race and class that are so strange to Ifemelu, because she is an outsider (to read or listen to an NPR interview with Adichie in the topic of 'learning to be black in the US'), are brought into relief, and presented with ironic and comedic effect in the fictional blog titles of articles that Ifemelu wrote: "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black."; "Not All Dreadlocked White Guys Are Down."; "Badly Dressed White Middle Managers from Ohio Are Not Always What You Think.";"Understanding America for the Non-American Black: What Do WASPs Aspire To?"; "What Academics Mean by White Privilege, or Yes It Sucks to Be Poor and White but Try Being Poor and Non-White." Although it is not explicit, these observations and the experiences that inspire these observations, are also deeply informed by gender, and specifically by the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and class.
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