Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s passion for hair is acknowledged throughout the novel, Americanah. Passion, not infatuation, because Adichie expresses great knowledge in regards to the topic of hair, primarily the afro hair of waves, curls and kinky texture. Her zest is primarily geared towards sharing her knowledge of the afro hair, which Adichie introduces in the Author’s Note for the 2023 edition of her book; she’d said to a friend prior to the novel’s publication that she “wanted to write a novel about Black women’s hair… hair as just hair, but also as plot device, as descriptor and as metaphor” (Adichie xiii), then Americanah was born. So that will be the topic of this blog post.
How had Adichie explored hair as just hair, hair as a plot device, hair as a descriptor, and hair as a metaphor in Americanah?
Whether Americanah is all about hair isn’t an argument when seeing its use as a plot device because Adichie sets the setting in which the tale is narrated within a hair salon. Written from the third-person omniscient point-of-view of the protagonist, Ifemelu, (occasionally exploring the story from Obinze’s point-of-view), the setting of a hair salon presents Adichie’s idea to organize the story as a tale of the past as each event gets closer to the present. In other words, the setting in the salon is like the main topic in a bubble map where it sits in the middle while a number of events surround it, connected by a series of other events, but returning to the present setting in the hair salon. Additionally, Adichie makes hair a priority in Ifemelu’s life, making it both her insecurity and ultimately, expressing the author’s passion through that character.
Adichie used hair as a metaphor in multiple instances. However, we will only highlight one specifically while briefing on other events throughout the novel. Early in the novel, Adichie expresses Ifemelu’s insecurity for hair when introducing Ifemelu’s mother. The fact that Ifemelu had “grown up in the shadow of her mother’s hair” (Adichie 49) gives the readers insight on Ifemelu’s character as someone who once had hair insecurity and admiration for her mother’s. However, this section was about the time when her mother had shaved her head, changing her appearance as she’d switched the church in which she’d decided to be affiliated with. This tale Adichie spins about Ifemelu’s past presents as a metaphor for Americanah, the word, not the title of the book, which is a written form of American, but written how the Yoruba people pronounce (78). The change of appearance, primarily her mother’s hair, represented how Ifemelu also changed with her time in America.
Hair is continuously explored in Americanah in multiple plot points of the novel such as when Adichie explores Ifemelu’s relationships and observations about hair and even using Ifemelu’s insecurity about hair to produce a character development. Like how her mother had changed with shaving her head, Ifemelu experiences the change in her Aunty Uju with changing her hair to one shaped by keratin treatment once she moved to the United States. Ifemelu battles insecurity of self when in her relationship with Curt as she notices his previous romantic relationships were with women of long, luscious hair… and Ifemelu’s was not.
Adichi’s voice is primarily heard through Ifemelu’s blog posts which are presented throughout Americanah. Ifemelu’s first blog post was about hair. She even has a blog post call “Michelle Obama Shout-Out Plus Hair as a Race Metaphor” (308), in which it is Adichie, not Ifemelu, who questions America’s view on beauty based on hair, and primarily the view of natural afro hair as “unprofessional”. Ifemelu’s blog post states that Michelle Obama would rock her natural hair (not the chemical drenched pin-straight hair), “but poor Obama would certainly lose the independent vote, even the undecided Democratic vote” (310). Adichie’s political views as a metaphor expressing her observations on American opinion drives many questions home on the place we call, the United States of America. Americanah is in another sense, a critique on the forced, yet illusionary natural change of the Negro people living in the States as losing their true Negro touch. Hair, as just hair, had revealed Adichie's uncensored thoughts on questionable change and the social rules of the American world.
I really like this post because it is something that particularly resonated with me when making connections between culture and identity, and any given character's particular physical location throughout the story. To me, the connection between hair and a character’s identity is central to understanding the story as a whole. Their hair is nearly directly correlated with how they view themselves in the society that surrounds them. For example, when Ifemelu initially was in America, she had to go to Trenton, New Jersey in order to get her hair done. There, she was told that she needed relaxers in her hair, but refused to do so, and was confused as to why she would need to do this. At this point in the novel, Ifemelu is still very in touch with her African culture and does not see the point in doing this, as it plays a role in somewhat erasing her cultural identity. The role of hair in this particular instance is so prominent and important because the very people telling her to relax her hair are black as well. However, the primary difference is that they are from America. Here, we are able to very apparently see the way not only race, but the society and culture you were raised in can impact something as seemingly menial as hair. Although we come to learn that hair is incredibly symbolic and significant, those who are black and live in the American society are almost predisposed to present themselves as “less black” than their counterparts, like Ifemelu, who were raised in Africa. These differences show the impact of the vast Americanization that can take place in someone’s life, as well as growing up in a place like America where there is a much greater white influence. Throughout the novel, we see Ifemelu go through an internal battle with these new expectations and eventually reject this American expectation to be “less black” and rather embraces her true identity.
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