Americanah

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Chapters 20-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 20 Summary

Ifemelu comes to love living in Baltimore, but struggles to find her place within Curt’s group of “sunny and wealthy” (256) white friends. Despite her years in America, their speech and actions are still not “fully knowable to her” (256). She begins to resent Curt’s spoiled affectations, his ego’s need for “constant buffing, polishing, waxing” (257). Her straightened hair begins to fall out, so she cuts it short, but hates how masculine it makes her look. A friend advises her to go natural, with an Afro. She discovers emails on Curt’s computer, messages in which he flirts with a woman he met at a work conference. Curt apologizes and swears it meant nothing, but Ifemelu leaves. Curt brings her flowers and she takes him back. She decides to wear her hair naturally, and falls “in love with her hair” (264).

Chapter 21 Summary

Aunty Uju calls Ifemelu, once again exasperated by Dike. He has refused to wear a shirt Bartholomew bought him. Ifemelu talks to Dike, advising him to wear the “striped, humorless shirt” (267) to make his mother happy. She brings Curt to meet Uju and Dike that weekend, and Uju is pleased by Curt’s charm and attentiveness. She comments negatively on Ifemelu’s hair (“‘There is something scruffy about natural hair’” (269)) and complains about Dike’s latest school essay, in which he claimed not know his identity. Uju confesses that she is not happy with Bartholomew, who expects her to hand over her paycheck and keep him fed and content. Soon afterwards, Uju leaves Bartholomew and moves to a little town called Willow, which Ifemelu likes. “It sounded to her like freshly squeezed beginnings” (273).

Chapter 22 Summary

One day, while she and Curt are at the mall, they run into Kayode, a friend of Obinze’s from secondary school. He tells her that Obinze has moved to England, but that he asked Kayode to try and find Ifemelu, to make sure she was doing well. Ifemelu is numb, ashamed of what she’s done to Obinze. “There were things scattered inside of her that she needed to gather together” (277). She and Kayode say goodbye, both knowing that she has “made the choice to shut him out” (277). She wonders what Kayode will tell Obinze about her—the rich white boyfriend? Her Afro? Later, she sends an email to Obinze’s old email address, apologizing for her silence. He does not respond.

Chapter 20-22 Analysis

After the chemical treatments meant to straighten Ifemelu’s hair actually destroy it, she chops all her hair off, recalling the episode in which her mother cut her hair early in the novel. When Ifemelu’s mother chopped her hair off, it was in recognition of a spiritual epiphany, but Ifemelu cuts her hair purely because she must, and she resents it. She feels ugly and boyish, though Curt thinks it looks fine. Part of her insecurity stems from her knowledge of Curt’s life before he met her, a life filled with pretty white, Latina, and Asian girlfriends—in fact, he reveals to Ifemelu that he has never been with a black woman before. As Ifemelu researches natural hair, she stumbles across flirtatious emails between Curt and a woman named Paola, “her long hair flowing behind her” (260). “‘All your girlfriends had long flowing hair,’” she accuses him. In this way, Ifemelu makes herself culpable for Curt’s minor emotional infidelity—she does not have long hair as his other crushes, so no wonder he strayed. Though he apologizes and they make up, Ifemelu then dives headfirst into cultivating her natural hair. She cannot be Paola or any other woman Curt has dated. Through this process, “she fell in love with her hair” (264) and by extension, herself.

Her chance meeting with Kayode in the mall also changes Ifemelu and sounds the death knell for her relationship with Curt. Kayode’s mention of Obinze, his new life in London, and his desire to know if Ifemelu is OK, brings home the full weight of her betrayal. “She had created the distance, ignoring him, changing her email address and phone number” (277) and yet she feels hurt that she did not know he’d moved. She and Curt had recently visited London. Ashamed of her own actions, she becomes cold towards Kayode, and he senses “that she made the choice to shut him out” just as she shut out Obinze, unable to tell him about her encounter with the tennis instructor. Though she insists nothing is wrong, Curt can tell that the encounter has shaken her. She feels ashamed of Curt for the first time, wondering what Kayode will tell Obinze about her “handsome white man in a BMW coupe” (278). That night, when she calls Curt a sweetheart, he responds that he wants to be the love of her life, something he is not and never can be. That position belongs to Obinze.