Ifemelu's Blog as a Mirror to Americanah

As some others in class discussions and on this blog have already addressed, Ifemelu writes a blog, and her posts are referenced and included in full form throughout Americanah. Other students have made some very insightful observations about the role these blog posts play in teaching the audience about Black issues outside of just the context of the story. They allow Adichie to reach through the third wall by speaking through Ifemelu. However, I also think the use of the blog posts grounds Ifemelu’s story further in reality and brings her closer to Adichie.

 

A lot of great fiction is rooted in reality. Many authors feel most comfortable writing about stories close to their own, and for some authors, fiction is a way to express their own feelings without the vulnerability of speaking as themselves. This seems to be the case with Adichie and Americanah. 

 

At the beginning of the course, we watched Adichie speak about some of her experience as an immigrant from Nigeria to the United States. We could in some ways think of Ifemelu as a mirror for Adichie’s own experiences – both are immigrants from Nigeria to the U.S., both chose to return home in some capacity, and many of Ifemelu’s experiences with racism and the concept of race in general are based on Adichie’s own. The blog is just an extension of this similarity. Ifemelu’s way of dealing with these difficult experiences is to write about them, not only to describe what she is experiencing but also to inform others from different backgrounds about the importance of listening to Black people and making an effort to understand (for example, her blog post about white privilege). Adichie also clearly expresses herself through writing (see Americanah – hopefully that sounds familiar). Ifemelu’s work to inform others through her blog is a mirror to Adichie’s work to inform others through literature and public speaking.

 

I believe that Adichie’s decision to make Ifemelu write a blog was a deliberate choice to highlight the parallels between Ifemelu’s story and her own. If she only wanted a way to speak through Ifemelu, there would have been lots of other options. The use of a blog turns the story from being about “an immigrant from Nigeria” to “an immigrant from Nigeria who is also a writer”. Since the story was also written by a writer who immigrated from Nigeria, this is meant to make the reader think, “how much of this story is made up and how much is true?” It brings the story closer to reality and makes the reader more aware that these situations really do happen, and perhaps they did happen to the author herself. Which parts are true and which parts are fiction? We probably won’t ever find out for sure, but the question makes the novel just a little more compelling.