Bookish Thoughts

This collection of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie went by really quickly. Her prose is so incredibly readable, which helps the stories she writes focus on their bittersweet emotions rather than got bogged down in them. The stories in this collection are all a bit melancholy, focusing on characters who have found themselves in less than ideal circumstances for various reasons. Some of them take action to change their lives, others quietly accept their circumstances, but they all come to that crossroads where they have to examine their choices and decide what they can live with and how they want to move forward. Adichie is, as ever, interested in the history of Nigeria and the relationship Nigerians have with America. America is billed is a land of opportunity, where dreams comes true, and character after character discovers that it's not as easy as that. That it is, occasionally, a downright lie. There are also a couple of stories that touch on Biafra and the coloniza...

Ever since I read Americanah I can't get enough of Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie's work. It's a shame she's written so few books (so far), but I'm stretching them out as long as I can. Purple Hibiscus is her first novel, and it definitely reads like a first novel. Not that it's bad. It's wonderful and sad and hopeful just like her other work. But it's not as polished as the novels that came later. Not as layered or dense or long. The story is narrated by Kambili, a sheltered 15-year-old whose world-view shatters when she finally gets out from under her father's control for a brief time. Kambili is young and naive. She's been taught to worship her father, and so she does. But his abuse of her, her brother, and her mother, obvious to the reader from the beginning, becomes harder and harder for Kambili to accept. Kambili is a strange mix of naive and wise. The naivete makes sense. Every aspect of her life is controlled by her father, who will pu...

This is an amazing, powerful, heavy book about love and betrayal and war. The story follows two sisters and their lovers and servants in Nigeria in the 1960s, before and during the Nigerian Civil War and the rise and fall of the brief nation, Biafra. I hadn't ever heard of this period in history before I encountered the work of Adichie. That's American education for you. We weren't really involved in this in any way, except for how we shaped it by ignoring it. Inside the pages of the book, one of the character is working on another book, a non-fiction account of the war titled The World Was Silent While We Died . It wasn't just silent then, it remains largely silent now. There's a lot going on here. The politics of the situation are complicated and Adichie does a great job distilling them through the use of ongoing conversations between the characters. Even moreso than in Americanah , debate is a central feature of this book. Well, the first half anyway. Once th...

To paraphrase a local librarian,  Americanah  is about love, race, and hair. It's the most succinct, accurate description of the book I've encountered, though it still leaves out quite a bit. Most description focus on the plot, when this novel has much more to do with the themes it explores than with the characters or what happens to them. The plot is more of a frame for Adichie to hang her ideas on than the point of this book. The book mostly focuses on Ifemelu, her childhood in Nigeria, young adulthood in America, and eventual return to Nigeria. It also follows her high school boyfriend, Obinze, as he travels to and is ultimately deported from London. Circling them are a wealth of friends and family members, each struggling with life and race in their own ways. The book is peppered with Ifemelu's blog posts, her musings on race in America as seen from an outsider. Americanah  is dense without being inaccessible. There's a lot going on here. A lot of ideas about gr...