Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013
A Nigerian woman arrives in America and learns, for the first time, that she is "Black." Adichie's 2013 novel maps the untranslatable gap between an African and an African-American identity with surgical precision. Its blog chapters changed how literary fiction can use social media as voice. The most important novel about race written in the 21st century so far.
The case against
Ifemelu's blog posts are op-eds wearing a costume, and the novel keeps stopping so they can lecture. Dinner-party scenes assemble characters whose job is to hold wrong opinions for her to correct. After all that observational rigor, the ending hands you a tidy romance reunion the rest of the book had seemed too smart for.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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