67 pages • 2 hours read

Americanah

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Chapters 31-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4

Chapter 31 Summary

The perspective switches back to Ifemelu. She cheats on Curt with a neighbor, a grungy man named Rob she “was not even sure she liked” (356). Curt is devastated, demanding to know the man’s name and why she has done this. He calls her a bitch, and the word “came out of his mouth sharp with loathing” (357). After he leaves, Ifemelu regrets her actions, spending days crying and calling Curt. She eventually accepts that the relationship is over. Years later, at a dinner party full of Obama supporters, she will remember her relationship with Curt as she argues with a stranger about whether interracial relationships can work, whether race can cease to be an issue. She believes it never will, that “‘we don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off’” (359), for fear of being termed overreactive. She talks about Curt, how he always tried to come to her rescue, like when a spa refused to do her “curly” (361) eyebrows. She remembers how he discounted the magazine Ebony, prompting her to show him how few black women were in mainstream magazines. Soon after, Ifemelu decides to start a blog. She calls it Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non-American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America. “How many other people chose silence?” (366) she wonders. She writes about Michelle Obama’s dark complexion, natural hair, and more.

Chapter 32 Summary

In the aftermath of her breakup with Curt, Ifemelu begins visiting Uju and Dike on weekends. Uju is a successful doctor, volunteering on trips to Sudan. She has a new boyfriend, a divorced Ghanaian named Kweku. Dike is doing better. “He was playing basketball now; his grades had improved. He liked a girl called Autumn” (371). Ifemelu’s father, employed again, decides that he and her mother should visit her in America. When they visit, she takes them to JC Penney and Kmart, ashamed that she “watched them with a sneer” (373). They urge their daughter to find a man to settle down with before she is too old. Feeling bored with her PR job and more concerned with creating good content for her blog, Ifemelu quits her job.

Chapter 33 Summary

Ifemelu’s blog becomes increasingly popular. She begins receiving requests to speak at schools, offices, and conferences. She gives interviews and advertises products. She accepts all the invitations, travelling around the country giving talks on diversity, but quickly realizes that her clients do not want to hear the raw, difficult truth about race relations, but “to leave people feeling good about themselves” (377). Though this irks her, she changes her tone accordingly. She hires an intern to help her, buys a small condo, and writes more blog posts, many on the topic of interracial dating. She assures her readers that her blog is “a safe space” (380) to express their thoughts.

Chapter 31-33 Analysis

In the dissolution of Ifemelu’s relationship with Curt, we see her self-destructive tendencies emerge, as well as her restlessness. “‘[Y]ou cheat on Curt because at some level you don’t think you deserve happiness’” (355), Ginika tells her. Ifemelu dismisses this, but has to admit that she does not understand why she slept with her neighbor. “There was something wrong with her…A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself” (358). Perhaps, because Curt and his friends would never truly understand her, to be around them was to not understand herself, as well. She thinks back on her relationship with Curt, “his sunny charm” (362) masking all the ways in which he did not understand her struggles. He discounted or brushed off many of Ifemelu’s claims of the racial slights she endured during their relationship, but after the breakup, feels a desire for understanding.

It is Curt’s honest, innocent ignorance that leads her to create her race blog, seeking out those who do understand. “How many other people chose silence?” (366) she wonders. “How many other people had become black in America?” (366). The comments section of her blog is filled with those who can empathize, not simply sympathize. She feels as though she is doing a good thing, illuminating the reality of race in America. Yet, when she discovers that those who hire her for corporate diversity talks do not want be lectured or judged, but rather to “feel good about themselves” (377) she capitulates, telling them what they want to hear. She justifies this by reminding herself that the people at the diversity talks would never read her blog, so a different tone can be used. Still, her blog takes as much from her as it gives, and she has “growing discomforts” (379) about angry blog readers “biding their time until they could attack her, unmask her” (379).