In Chapter 27 of Americanah, Obinze left the bookshop and made his way to the tube station. When he sat down on the tube, he noticed a woman opposite of him reading the evening paper, which was titled “Speak English at home, Blunkett tells immigrants” (Adichie 320). Obinze notes that many articles regarding immigration in the British Isles were being published, which instilled fear in citizens about asylum seekers trying to come into their country. The text states:
“[S]o articles were written and read, simply and stridently, as though the writers lived in a world in which the present was unconnected to the past, and they had never considered this to be the normal course of history: the influx into Britain of black and brown people from countries created by Britain” (Adichie 320).
These writers were failing to acknowledge that Britain once ruled the countries that these immigrants were coming from, and citizens were acting as if they should be fearful of the immigrants’ attempts to settle into their country. Obinze believes that the citizens denying the history of their country had to be comforting for them because they were failing to acknowledge that these immigrants we once part of British rule.
Why would the citizens rather deny the past and become fearful of immigrants seeking to come into their country, instead of feeling compassion and empathy for the immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves?
Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah, Anchor Books, A Division of Random House LLC, New York, 2013, p. 317-321.