Prejudice in Americanah

Prejudice is an everyday experience. Everybody has been a victim of

it, but everyone has felt it towards others. In Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie's novel "Americanah", Ifemelu and Aunty Uju go to America
to study at university and have difficulty integrating into American
society. The prejudice encompassing them is one of the main themes
of the book.

One quote from the text that really shows the level of prejudice in
America is: "This is America. It's different.", this is said by Aunty Uju,
as an answer to Ifemelu after she tried to speak in Igbo to Dike and
Aunty Uju told her not to speak to him in Igbo, that English was
already enough. Ifemelu tries to argue that they spoke two
languages growing up and Aunty Uju responds with "This is America.
It's different.".
Here we can see a lot of prejudice from Aunty Uju towards her native
language and country. This is not all her fault as this prejudice was
engrained into her by the Americans.

Aunty Uju not only feels, but experiences prejudice as well. And not
only in America, but already in Nigeria she had to cope with it. Due
to her involvement with The General, even giving birth to his son,
she was the victim to being called a "common harlot" and a
"prostitute" leading to her not being able to "live in peace in this
Lagos" as expressed by one of The General's relatives. This shows
how she was never able to integrate into her surroundings and be
accepted by others. How she always remained an outcast and was
made to feel the effects of this.

Another case of this is Ifemelu. It’s hard for her to adjust to a new
place after moving from home to go a new university. Therefore the
people there are of course different from the ones she is used to
from at home. She says “The people are too satisfied with the
smallness of their lives”. In this case she doesn’t understand how
people can be okay with the few things they have in their lives. This
means for her that she needs many things in her life to be happy and
judges the people in the city by their appearance and lifestyle. She
generalizes it for the whole city and knows already that she probably
won’t like it. This shows the complicated character of Ifemelu.

This not only highlights Ifemelu's complex character, but the general
difficulty of dealing with prejudice within ourselves. Anytime we feel
like the victims we must reflect on our situation and think more
deeply whether that is really the case or are we more often the
source of such prejudice. Hopefully we will see this throughout the
rest of the novel by the Ifemelu and Aunty Uju and its positive effect
in them and their surroundings.