chimamanda ngozi adichie americanah 2013

I was just so grateful to have classes that I not only did well in, but also enjoyed.' But I didn't really have a firm idea of what I would do with it. I did think I would go back home, which in many ways I have, because I have a life in both places. 'I really love the American liberal arts college education system and the way you can take classes in philosophy, political science and communications. On the American tradition of higher education So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.'

'Race is such a strange construct,' says Adichie, 'because you have to learn what it means to be black in America.

Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery - and its continuing reverberations - in the U.S. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn't share her anger - but she didn't have the context to understand why. 'I remember sitting there thinking, 'But what's so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,' ' Adichie tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. The learning process took some time and was episodic. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. GradeSaver, 31 August 2016 Web.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Americanah Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Next Section Americanah Summary Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Cohen, Madeline. It was announced in 2014 that a movie adaptation of the novel will be produced featuring Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo as the romantic leads Ifemelu and Obinze. Americanah met immediate critical acclaim and won multiple awards in 2013 including the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and selection as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. The novel intensely scrutinizes race in the United States as well as life, love, and wealth in both the US and Nigeria.

Like her two prior novels, Americanah focuses on the lives of Nigerians, primarily the character Ifemelu who is born and raised in Nigeria and moves to the United States in her twenties. Americanah is the third novel of author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2013 after the success of her novels Purple Hibiscus(2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).

Chimamanda ngozi adichie americanah 2013