Americanah

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Chapters 38-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 38 Summary

Ifemelu rents out her condo in Baltimore and moves in with Blaine. While living in New Haven, she meets Boubacar, another professor at Yale, who is originally from Senegal. He and Ifemelu bond over their African upbringings, and Ifemelu is happy to know someone who “spoke the same silent language she did” (421). Boubacar informs her of a humanities fellowship at Princeton University. Ifemelu is hesitant, but he urges her to apply for it, saying the committee wants people who are “pushing boundaries” (421). One day, she visits Boubacar’s class, noting that most of the students are browsing the internet rather than listening to the lecture. Boubacar invites her to a going away party for a colleague. She gets a text from Blaine, informing her that something has happened to Mr. White, the library security guard.

She and Blaine meet up, and he explains that Mr. White was taken away by the police after a white employee saw him exchange something with another black man and assumed he was dealing drugs. He was released and is now back at work, but Blaine is incensed. He quickly arranges a student/faculty response to the racist incident, planning a protest outside the library later that day. Ifemelu agrees to meet him there, but goes to the going away party instead. She tells Blaine she took a nap and overslept, but he quickly discovers her lie. He is devastated, and “for a moment she hated him, this man who ate her apple cores and turned even that into something of a moral act” (427). Blaine accuses her of treating her blog like a game; “she was not sufficiently furious because she was African, not African American” (428). Blaine does not speak to her for three days, at which point she packs a bag and leaves.

Chapter 39 Summary

Ifemelu goes to stay with Dike and Aunty Uju. Uju tells her that Dike has been accused of hacking the school’s computer system, something he insists he doesn’t know how to do. Dike is not surprised by the allegation: “‘You have to blame the black kid first’” (433).

She calls Blaine for nine days before he agrees to let her come back for the weekend. They cook dinner, but relations between them are tense. She tries to hug him, but he pulls away. She remembers “her first winter with him, when everything had seemed burnished and unendingly new” (435).

Chapter 40 Summary

Ifemelu and Blaine make up, but Ifemelu’s feelings for him are never quite the same. “She still admired him…but now it was admiration for a person separate from her, a person far away” (437). They become closer through Barack Obama’s nomination, presidential run, and eventual victory. Ifemelu reads his memoir, Dreams from My Father, and feels kinship with his recent African roots. She is distressed by the racist comments about Obama she reads on internet message boards.

Ifemelu receives the fellowship at Princeton. She plans to move after the election, and in the meantime, blogs about Obama, his campaign, and his race. She feels more comfortable with Blaine’s friends, as they all rally around their chosen candidate. “Their friends, like her and Blaine, were believers. True believers” (442). On the night of the election, she, Blaine, and all his friends watch as Barack Obama becomes the first black president of America, cheering and crying. She receives a text from Dike: “I can’t believe it. My president is black like me” (447). As she watches Obama deliver his victory speech, “nothing was more beautiful to her than America” (448).

Chapter 41 Summary

Back in the braiding salon, Aisha the hairdresser asks how Ifemelu got her visa. Her Nigerian boyfriend has his papers, and she once again asks Ifemelu to speak with him. Ifemelu demurs and Aisha begins to cry. Ifemelu agrees to go to the boyfriend’s place of work and speak to him, though she knows she should “not be dragged further into Aisha’s morass” (452). Aisha finishes her braids and gives Ifemelu her boyfriend’s address. Ifemelu promises to speak to him the next day.

While walking back to the train station, Ifemelu gets a call from Aunty Uju who is “incoherent, talking and sobbing at the same time” (453). Dike has swallowed a bottle of pills, but is now in the ICU and will be fine. Ifemelu tells Uju she will be there the next day, and wonders “what she had been doing while Dike was swallowing a bottle of pills” (454).

Chapter 38-41 Analysis

At the end of Chapter 38, Ifemelu reproduces a copy of The Invisible Knapsack, a famous teaching tool used to explain white privilege, on her blog. In the context of the novel, it is used as a literary device, as we can hear Ifemelu herself asking each question. “If a traffic cop pulls you over, do you wonder if it is because of your race? When you go shopping at a nice store, do you worry that you will be followed or harassed?” (430). For each question, the reader can hear Ifemelu, and Blaine, and Uju, and Dike answer “yes.”

Obama’s presidential race is the first racially important world event for which Ifemelu has been present. It is, therefore, something she can share with Blaine, rather than simply learn from him. It is part of their shared history as black people living in America, and “Ifemelu no longer felt excluded” (441). They and their friends discuss the politics of the campaign, the ways in which Obama is palatable to white voters in a way that an average black man from Georgia would not be. “And it struck Ifemelu anew, how much everyone agreed. Their friends, like her and Blaine, were believers. True believers” (442). On the day Obama receives the nomination, Blaine and Ifemelu go to a rally, where she sees a black man with his young black son, the father’s face “suddenly young with joyfulness” (443). The scene touches Ifemelu, as does Blaine’s story about his conversation with an old black woman who declares she never would have imagined a black president, even in her grandchildren’s lifetimes. When Obama wins the presidency, she immediately receives a text from Dike: “I can’t believe it. My president is black like me” (447). The men who ran Nigeria in Ifemelu’s childhood were all black. In her existence before immigrating, she always shared a race with those in power, but Dike’s childhood has been different, and the effect Obama has on his self image and sense of self worth is striking. “She read the text a few times, her eyes filling with tears” (447).