"Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it."
Americanah is a novel by Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze.
The work contains examples of the following tropes:
- Accent Slip-Up: Ifemelu trains a very convincing American accent, but occasionally slips into her native Nigerian accent in excitement.
- Black Like Me: Deconstructed - Ifemelu is of dark skin colour, but tries to appear as an African American instead of an immigrant in the beginning. She stops quickly when she realizes that native Americans of dark skin colour are not treated any better than her.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The German translation decided to literally translate the name of the TV show "friends" as "Freunde". Of course, the TV show is known with its English name in the German-speaking world.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Blaine mocks the French African accent of Ifemelu's professor.
- Broken Pedestal: After their first big fight, Ifemelu stops holding her boyfriend Blaine on such a high regard than she did before because he ignored her for days.
- Cannot Talk to Women: Nigel from Obinze's workplace in London asks Obinze for help
- Flashback B-Plot: Big chunks of the book are just one big flashback to Ifemelu and Obinze's upbringing, coming-of-age and early adulthood.
- From New York to Nowhere: Ifemelu experiences this when she decides to move from her birthtown Lagos to Nsukka - Lagos is populated by about 20 million people, Nsukka by about 40,000.
- Grass is Greener: Deconstructed. Obinze desperately wants to escape Nigeria, fails and ends up happy and pretty wealthy in his home country. Ifemelu doesn't want to leave as much, but succeeds in getting to the US - only to end up unhappy there.
- Happy-Ending Massage: Played for drama. In desperate need of money, Ifemelu gives one to a tennis coach she applied to for a job, sparking a heavy depression and her eventual disconnect to Obinze.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Ifemelu and Dike foster a strong one, despite both being about 15 years apart.
- Jackie Robinson Story: One part of the book revolves around Barack Obama's run for presidency in 2008 and the hopes of Ifemelu and Blaine's friend circle upon it.
- The Kids Are American: Auntie Uju's son Dike was born in Nigeria, but grew up in the US, so he ends up with a native American accent.
- Misery Builds Character: Applies to both protagonists Ifemelu and Obinze. The former lived through heavy depressions when she first came to the US and when she broke up with Curt, while the latter crossed the Despair Event Horizon when he was deported from the UK.
- Never A Selfmade Woman: Auntie Uju relies completely on the General's allowances, and after her migration to the US she looks for a new man to hold her out.
- No Antagonist: While there are a few gray characters, there are no true antagonists to the main characters.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: Subverted. Ifemelu's friend Ginika highlights that while Ifemelu is beautiful, her strong character might oppose men - turns out, Obinze likes this trait in particular.
- The One Who Made It Out: Zig-zagged: There are actually multiple characters that "escape" Nigeria to end up successful in the UK or the US, and only some of them and up happy with that.
- Passed-Over Promotion: Before starting her blog, Ifemelu worked in a company where she was refused promotion - in her eye, due to her skin colour. One blog post of her deals with how most Americans will accept Black people as housemaids or drivers, but never as a boss.
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: Inversed: It's actually Ifemelu herself who cheats, what drives the plot forward.
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Played for drama. Obinze settles for a fake marriage with the Portuguese citizen Cleotilde, but it's heavily implied that they have strong mutual feelings for each other. Obinze's deportation ends the promiseful romance.
- So Near, Yet So Far: Obinze is arrested by an immigration officer just before he would have married Cleotilde, granting him permanent residentship.
