Ifemelu's Blog Posts -- A Deeper Glimpse into the Mind of Ifemelu

 “What is the importance of the blog entries that appear in the novel? What do the blog entries enable Adichie to do?”

The blog entries in Americanah serve as a source of emotional reassurance and emotional escape for Ifemelu and enable Adichie to provide the readers with a direct account of Ifemelu’s inner thoughts. 

The blog entries allow Ifemelu to escape from the sometimes harsh realities of American life upon her complicated identity; “blogs were new, unfamiliar to her. But telling Wambui what happened was not satisfying enough… How many other people chose silence? How many other people had become black in America?” (298). 

Ifemelu experiences a number of microaggressions from characters she interacts with, whether they seem to be well-intentioned or not. Occasionally, Ifemelu will voice her thoughts towards the characters who demean her. For example, when Laura continues to make racist remarks concerning Black Americans and African-Americans, Ifemelu finally speaks up against Laura. Taken aback, “Laura’s lips sagged. She staggered, collected herself,” and Ifemelu deals with the subsequent consequences of speaking up, trying to manage Kimberly’s subtle reaction concerning the situation. Clearly, for Ifemelu attempting to find her place in America’s racist culture, speaking back against white authorities is not always an option.

Many times, Ifemelu is forced to face the microaggressions in silence. 

Ifemelu’s blog posts are her momentary relief from American life. In anonymity, Ifemelu exposes the racism and sexism she experiences and provides her own analysis on the situations without fear of reprimand. For example, in her blog post “To My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby,” Ifemelu gets the opportunity to voice all of her opinions regarding her experience as a black individual thus far, to a sympathetic audience. She writes,

“If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion,” (223).

Ifemelu does not have the option to describe this observation to her boyfriend Curt, who clearly would push back and belittle her. She does not have the option to describe this observation to Aunty Uju, who is far too consumed with attempting to please her boyfriend Bartholomew to be concerned with her identity as an African woman who immigrated to America. At the end of the day, Ifemelu has no option but to rant about her draining experiences online or otherwise in writing, as no one in her life would understand anyways. 

The blog posts also provide Ifemelu with a sense of community. During Ifemelu’s time in America, she never crosses paths with an individual who truly understands her perspective, or whole-heartedly agrees with her social views on American culture. Having spent over a decade in America, the emotional toll of living in what is essentially social isolation becomes incredibly overwhelming to her at times. Yet individuals online interact with and agree with her well-written blog posts, providing her with the hope that she is not entirely alone in her views on life in America. Although she does not personally interact with individuals who truly understand her, she knows that somewhere, someone else holds similar opinions. Ifemelu’s blog posts allow her to better cope with life in America. They assure her of her sanity and they provide her with comfort. 

Americanah is set in a third-person point-of-view. For most of the novel, we gain information about Ifemelu’s thoughts on social class and race in America through our own interpretation of her interactions and conversations between Africans, African-Americans, and white people, both poor and wealthy. The blog entries enable Adichie to provide a direct account of Ifemelu’s thoughts to the reader. We discover how Ifemelu puts her thoughts into text, we see her stream of consciousness in action. 

For example, in the aftermath of her interactions with Blaine and her white friends during the Obama/McCain election cycle, Ifemelu provides us with a direct account of her inner thoughts on the matter in the blog post, “Understanding America for the Non-American Black: Thoughts on the Special White Friend” (361). She says, “many whites with the same qualifications but Negro skin would not have the jobs they have. But don’t ever say this publicly. Let your white friend say it. If you make the mistake of saying this, you will be accused of a curiosity called ‘playing the race card.’ Nobody quite knows what this means” (361). We would not get this direct monologue of opinion from Ifemelu had it not been for the blog post. 

Of course we obtain reliable information about Ifemelu’s perspective and emotions from the bulk of the novel. But the blogs offer us a direct look at the inside of Ifemelu’s mind which, I would argue, we really do not fully obtain elsewhere.