Americanah is a novel mainly about love and race. It features two main characters Ifemelu and Obinze, who both struggle with identity on their quest to find a sense of national belonging. Ifemelu is the female protagonist of the novel and she is a teenager from Nigeria. She writes blogs mostly pertaining to her anger towards the topic of race. Ifemelu is vulnerable at times, but is a strong advocate of being true to one’s self. An example of when Ifemelu is shown to be vulnerable is when she lets her employer force her into having sex for $100. Obinze is a Nigerian The young lovers meet in Nigeria, but become separated when Ifemelu moves to America for school purposes. Ifemelu stays at her Aunty Uju’s house with her cousin Dike. She learns a lot about American culture, based on Dike’s experience with depression, …show more content…
She gets hopeless and becomes a prostitute, which makes her reluctant to contact Obinze. She later gets hired as a nanny by Kimberly, and has a romantic relationship with her brother, Curt, who helps her find a job. Meanwhile in America, Obinze is forced to take on a fake identity in order to get proper citizenship, but does not actually achieve this. He is deported back to Nigeria where he becomes a wealthy businessman. The novel ends when Obinze decides to leave his wife and child, and reunite with Ifemelu. There is a very serious theme painted throughout the novel and Adichie’s writing is golden because of how explicit she is with conveying her insights. The themes are most evident through Ifemelu’s personal experience with immigration, sexual violence, unemployment, and her relationships. Identity is a key theme in the novel, and an example which shows this, is when she cuts her hair for a job interview. The significance of identity in connection to themes of race, class and gender are exemplified through the blogs which Ifemelu writes throughout the course of the
After reading The Book of the Unknown Americans, I realized how difficult immigrating to the United States can be. I am an immigrant also, so just reading the story makes me relate to many problems immigrants experience relocating to a different country. Immigrants often face many issues and difficulties, but for some it is all worth it, but for others there comes a point in time where they have to go back to their hometown. Alma and Arturo Rivera came to the United States to better their life, but also so that Maribel could attend a special education school. While Arturo had a job things had gone well for the family, but once Arturo lost the job and passed away the two of them had to go back because they felt that that was the best option for them. Reading this book made me realize how strong an individual has to be to leave their own country and relocate somewhere else not knowing if this will better your life or cause one to suffer.
A mother drives her three kids to soccer practice in a Ford minivan while her husband stays at the office, rushing to finish a report. Meanwhile, a young woman prays her son makes his way home from the local grocery without getting held up at knife point by the local gang. Nearby, an immigrant finishes another 14-hour shift at the auto parts factory, trying to provide for his wife and child, struggling to make way in a new land. Later, a city girl hails a cab to meet her girlfriends at their favorite club to celebrate her new promotion over cosmopolitans. These people – the suburban soccer mom, the tired immigrant, the worried mother from the hood, and the successful city girl – each represent the different realities or fantasies that exist in the American society. They are all living or working towards what they believe to be the coveted American dream. Some of these people are similar to the Chinese immigrant, Ralph, in Gish Jen’s novel Typical American. However, all are confused as to what the American dream really is and whether or not the dream is real.
She talks about how after writing her novel she was conversing with an American who had just read the novel. He stated that it was a shame how Nigerian men where physical abusers, such as the man in her novel had been. She is quick to tell him that she ’ had just finished reading the novel American Psycho, and that it was a shame that all young American men were serial murders’ (Adichie 11:04). It is here that we see how a single story can affect our image of a group of people. Obviously, not all Nigerian men are abusers, in the same sense that not all American men are serial murders. The man that she was talking to had made an inference based on reading one Nigerian book, a single story. She goes on to say that because of Americas economic and political power she had read many novels about America, resulting in many stories, widening her perception of
The tone of the short story “America and I” changed dramatically over the course of the narrative. The author, Anzia Yezierska, started the story with a hopeful and anxious tone. She was so enthusiastic about arriving in America and finding her dream. Yezierska felt her “heart and soul pregnant with the unlived lives of generations clamouring for expression.” Her dream was to be free from the monotonous work for living that she experienced back in her homeland. As a first step, she started to work for an “Americanized” family. She was well welcomed by the family she was working for. They provided the shelter Yezierska need. She has her own bed and provided her with three meals a day, but after a month of working, she didn’t receive the wage she was so
América’s view of the US changes drastically as the story progress. In the beginning of the story she is full of enthusiasm about coming to America with her husband Candido; due to the fact he promised they would have a better life. As the story progresses reality hits and she realizes that the American Dream isn’t easy to achieve. América realizes this by how she finds herself settling in a canyon with no clean water, not enough money and then having to work a lot after Candido is in the accident and then proceeding to steal from a garden just to have vegetables for her family.
We have all heard the African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The response given by Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, simply states, “If you’ve got a village. But if you don’t, then maybe it just takes two people” (Donoghue 234). For Jack, Room is where he was born and has been raised for the past five years; it is his home and his world. Jack’s “Ma” on the other hand knows that Room is not a home, in fact, it is a prison. Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story but give significance as well. The Point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side with conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel.
influence all her life and struggles to accept her true identity. Through the story you can
Love is powerful and could change a person’s personality. In “The Book of Unknown Americans”, the author Christina Hernriquez tells us the definition of love. It is a book combined with different stories but each story is connected to others. It talks about the immigrants that moved to America with lots of hope, but didn’t end up with a happy ending. The story is about love, hope and guilt and different kinds of emotional feeling. In the book, Mayor has an internal change because of Maribel, and the power of love. He wants to be a strong man who can protect Maribel. He used to be someone who couldn’t defend himself and he changed because of Maribel.
Typical American by Gish Jen demonstrates the different struggles that a traditional immigrant family encounters. The book being discussed will be explained by means of historical influences and biographical influences during Jen’s life that affected the novel. This essay will also contain a critical analysis of the book and an analysis of the critical response from others.
One of the central themes that Achebe developed in his book “Things Fall Apart” is the contrast between feminine and masculine in the African tribes, more specifically Umofia. In the Ibo culture the gender difference plays an important role in Umofian people’s daily life, and has become one of the centric themes of Achebe’s book. This masculinity vs femininity theme has developed through novels protagonist, Okonkwo, by explaining his different reactions toward folktales, sports, and farming.
The first part of the book gives an account of Immaculée’s family background. The love she experienced from her parents and her three brothers is illustrated. Her parents cared for everybody, particularly the poor. Because of the love with which she grew up, she never realised that she was living in a country where hatred against the Tutsi, her tribe, was rampant. It was not until she was asked to stand up in class by her teacher during an ethnic roll call that she realised that her neighbours were not what she thought them to be – good and friendly. After struggling to get into high school and university, not because she was not qualified but because of discrimination against her ethnic background, she worked hard to prove that if women are given opportunities to...
This entire novel is about an identity crisis. At the start of the novel, Edna Pontellier is a wife who barely accepts the constraints
Moniza Alvi employ a wide variety of techniques, from end-stopped lines and formatting in structure, to rhyme, tone, and even imagery and language to attempt to explore the vast concept of identity. She successfully manages to explore the concept of identity, and conveys to the reader the meaningful message that discovering your true identity is dearly valued and highly significant.
Racism and sexism thinly veiled by xenophobia in America, Adichie portrays these two factors in society. Generally by putting her main character through a consistent stream of seemingly routine events involving one or even both of the factors. Often times she deals with micro-aggressions about her hair, which does not fit the American standard of beauty and elegance. Often showing how people are quick to assume that she is unintelligent simply by her skin and her accent. Often times Adichie portrays Ifemelu as the object of criticism and envy. Ifemelu is merely struggling to survive in a new environment. An environment that by all accounts constantly attempts to tear her down, her psyche and emotional stability constantly suffering damage.
Adichie portrays the persisting existence of traditional African culture through Odenigbo’s mother – who symbolizes the extreme end of traditional beliefs. When Odenigbo’s mother visits Odenigbo and Olanna at their apartment in Nsukka, she is immediately personified as the traditional Nigerian village woman. Unaccepting of modern attitudes and advancements, she “peered suspiciously at the stove, knocked on the pressure cooker and tapped the pots...