Provocation post group 3

In Chapter 27,  Obinze visits a bookshop cafe and started focusing on reading American newspapers and magazines, rather than the British ones. The reason was that these, “stoked panic in his chest,” (Adichie 317). Later, a woman on the train was reading a paper that had a title about immigrants. The interesting aspect of this chapter was how lonely Obinze seems as someone who is trying to obtain citizenship, especially with his sentence that stated, “his existence like an erased pencil sketch,” (Adichie 318). It brought up aspects of past British colonization and current immigration. He goes on to say that, “the influx into Britain of black and brown people from countries created by Britain. Yet he understood. It had to be comforting, this denial of history,” which I thought was particularly powerful and I was able to draw parallels between that and what is currently happening in the U.S. in relation to immigration (Adichie 320).

Question: Do you think countries that have colonization in their past should be working harder to address racism, as well as be more open with their borders towards immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers?

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, et al. Americanah. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, 2017.

One thought on “Provocation post group 3”

  1. I believe that countries should push harder to address racism. However, I think the problem with that not happening, in my opinion, is that people in those countries, like America for example, are simply ignorant to it or comfortable with the state of things now. In the beginning of chapter 40, Ifemelu talks about Barack Obama, “even though she wished America would elect a black man as president, she thought it impossible, and she could not imagine Obama as president of the United States” (Adichie 437).

    This line supports what I mean about people being comfortable and not pushing harder for the topic of racism. In the sense that we’ve always had a white president, something that the people of America are comfortable with, but when we had Obama running for president, it force the people to discuss and push the topic of Racism because something was changing what most were comfortable with.

    My question:
    Why do you think Ifemelu couldn’t imagine Barack as president, aside from his body shape/appearance that she stated in the book?

Comments are closed.