Americanah

When Ifemelu breaks up with Blaine, he insists that she take his houseplant—“hopeful green leaves rising from three bamboo stems” (9). The plant, though it belongs to Blaine, represents their relationship and the differences between them. Ifemelu agrees to take it, though “a sudden crushing loneliness lanced through her and stayed with her for weeks” (9). Ifemelu takes responsibility for the plant as she takes responsibility for their breakup. She accepts the plant and hangs on to it just as she hangs onto Blaine in Nigeria, lying to her parents and insisting that Blaine will be joining her later. Blaine, for his part, gives her his plant with its “hopeful” green leaves because he too is hopeful. Because Ifemelu does not understand the cause of their breakup, he believes there may be a chance of reconciliation, though Ifemelu feels that their relationship was “like being content in a house but always sitting by the window” (9)—much like Blaine’s houseplant. 

Food, particularly the differences between American and Nigerian food, is a consistent motif within the novel. Food is used to exemplify Ifemelu’s difficult adjustment to America, her cousin Dike’s precarious position as a Nigerian-born American, and the ways living in America has changed Ifemelu, once she returns to Nigeria.

When Ifemelu arrives in America and stays with Aunty Uju and Dike, she is fascinated and perplexed by American food. She enjoys McDonalds, but is baffled when Aunty Uju suggests sandwiches for lunch, “as though those words were perfectly normal and did not require a humorous preamble about how Americans ate bread for lunch” (131). She botches the hot dogs Dike requests, cooking them like sausages despite his protestations. “She knew then that she should have listened to him” (132) because Dike, not Ifemelu, is the expert in this situation, and it unnerves her. Even food once familiar to her has changed shape, much like her world has. “She was disoriented by the blandness of fruits…bananas were so big, so evenly yellow” (139). She offers Dike bananas with peanuts, a snack from her childhood, but he rejects it and Nigeria in general, saying, “‘I don’t think I like Nigeria, Coz’” (139). Obinze experiences a similar disorientation while out to dinner with Emenike at a posh restaurant. Emenike’s assimilation is clear from his positive reaction to “three elegant bits of green weed, for which he would pay thirteen pounds” (331) Obinze, for his part, is nauseated by the sight of beef tartar.

Ifemelu adapts to the food in America, but always recognizes a divide in her tastes, one that does not dissipate. She eats bananas and peanuts and “did not like soul food” (401), the traditional dishes of black Americans. Soul food, in particular fried chicken, becomes a sticking point between her and Blaine, exemplifying their cultural divide. After a dinner party attended by Blaine’s ex girlfriend, a white American named Paula, Ifemelu becomes jealous of all that Blaine and Paula share, as Americans—food included. “‘For you and Paula, fried chicken is battered. For me, fried chicken has no batter’” (409), Ifemelu explains to Blaine. He brushes it off, but Ifemelu cannot shake the “emotional remnants that existed between him and Paula” (409), a thought triggered by food.

When Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, she experiences feelings of nostalgia, particularly with regards to food. She is excited by the prospect of drinking malted drinks again, as the version sold in America “‘was not the same thing’” (479) and gossips with friends over ofada rice and chicken stew. At the Nigerpolitan Club, she judges other former expatriates for missing smoothies and pining for a “good vegetarian place” (503). Ifemelu feels at home again, finally, and so enjoys “eating all the things she had missed while away, jollof rice cooked with a lot of oil, fried plantains, boiled yams” (503). She even writes a blog post rebuking those returning from America who desire non-Nigerian food. “Nigeria is not a nation of people with food allergies…it is a nation of people who eat beef and chicken and cow skin” (520). Despite her self-righteous posturing, though, Ifemelu still finds herself longing for things like “quinoa, Blaine’s specialty, made with feta and tomatoes” (503) and refuses to eat fries made from frozen potatoes (548). In this way, Ifemelu’s conflicted feelings towards food symbolize her conflicted feelings towards America and Nigeria. Once content with Nigerian food and baffled by sandwiches, she is later caught somewhere in middle, a Nigerian heavily influenced by her life in America. 

In the midst of his affair with Ifemelu, Obinze frets about whether to tell his wife, Kosi, about it and whether to divorce her. The day he decides to tell her about Ifemelu, Obinze goes to their room. He sees Kosi “sitting in front of her dressing table, which was full of creams and potions so carefully arranged that he sometimes imagined putting his hands under the table and overturning it, just to see how all those bottles would fare” (570). 

Here, the polished dressing table with all of its delicate bottles represents Obinze and Kosi’s marriage. The marriage, like the dressing table, has been carefully cultivated and tended by Kosi—Obinze barely factors in. Though Kosi is deeply invested in her marriage and family, cooking for Obinze despite his own culinary skills and developing “an intemperate dislike of single women” (43), Obinze fantasies about overturning their life together, just as he fantasizes about destroying her bottles of cosmetics. The fact that he wonders about whether or not the bottles would break suggests that he believes that Kosi could emerge from the dissolution of the marriage intact.