Americanah and Jollof Rice

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an amazing book that is many different things in one package - a coming of age story, an immigrant story, a commentary on race and at its vibrant, beating heart - a love story.  As you may be able to tell from my description, I absolutely loved it.  It was both thought provoking and emotionally satisfying on multiple levels.  The book tells the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who moves to the United States and then decides to return home to Nigeria.  The story starts in Princeton, where Ifemelu is doing a fellowship.  When we first meet her she has already decided that she is going to move back to Lagos, leaving her American boyfriend behind.  Before she leaves she needs to get her hair braided, and the only place for her to do that is an African hair salon in Newark - as she sits in the salon chair (with an uneasy relationship with the woman braiding her hair) for the long braiding process, Ifemelu thinks back on everything that has led up to this moment.  Adichie moves back and forth in time for most of the novel, moving back in time and returning every so often to this salon chair.   The hair braiding process and Ifemelu's choice of what to do with her hair (chemically straighten in, chop it all off, braid it) serves throughout as a touch point for her identify both in Nigeria and as an African woman in America.  Ifemelu (and Adichie) is a sharp, keen eyed observer of the world around her, particularly as an "outsider" in America.  Her experiences and commentary are both funny and painfully on point.  I could have read 300 more pages of her story.

Although Americanah starts in Princeton, the real story of the novel begins when Ifemelu is a child in Nigeria.  She comes from a comfortable but not rich family and is known as being intelligent and outspoken.  As a teenager she falls in love with Obinze, whose mother is a professor.  Each of Ifemelu and Obinze stand out from their group of friends as a little special, a little more ambitious, a little more forward in their thinking.  Adichie cements the core of the novel with this love story - their love is real and despite what happens, throughout the book we are routing for these two to be together.  Ifemelu wins a scholarship to college in the United States and leaves Obinze behind.  She joins her Auntie Uju in Atlanta, where she had moved with her son Dike.  Auntie Uju is one of the first "life lessons" Ifemelu learns - she was a medical student in Lagos who starting having an affair with a rich general - she lived well, as a kept woman, and had his child.  When the party he supported was thrown out, she was thrown out of her life too - left with nothing.  In the U.S. she struggles, her Nigerian medical degree not getting her very far professionally in the states.  Ifemelu learns the harsh realities of life in the U.S. quickly, and immediately struggles to support herself and feels like an outsider.  In an act of desperation she takes a job that traumatizes her, and after this she finds herself in a deep, deep depression and then cuts off all contact with Obinze, back in Nigeria.  Here is where their paths separate, and each much find there own way to adulthood.  Obinze leaves Nigeria for London, struggles to find his way and make a living and is eventually jailed and deported. Eventually Ifemelu finds her way in the States, making friends in college through the African Students Association (but she feels like an outsider from the Black Students Association).  She starts a blog about race from the non-American black perspective - never before she came to the U.S. was "race" a thing for her, now in the U.S. it is part of everything.  She gets a job working for the stereotypical guilty wealthy white liberal family, she starts dating a dashing white friend of that family.  She eventually breaks up with him and starts a relationship with Blake, an African-American professor at Yale.  Each of these relationships has challenges, and she never stops thinking about Obinze.  He, meanwhile, becomes successful in real estate in Lagos, gets married to a beautiful but placid woman and has a child.  Ifemelu moves back to Nigeria but it is not the same, not what she longed for before she left the U.S.  She turns her critical eye to home as well.  Eventually Obinze and Ifemelu are reunited and of course there is the drama that comes with it.  While the "will they or won't they" be reunited plot moves the book along, the real meat of the book are the various vignette's and observations about being an immigrant, being an outsider and feeling at home - both in your own country and a new one, finding your voice, crazy and funny things about Nigeria, crazy and funny things about the U.S. and of course race.  I loved reading Ifemelu's unique perspective on things and I was both intellectually stimulated and emotionally moved by the book.  Go get it! (P.S., at publication time, I also learned that Lupita Nyong'o has optioned the rights to the book, and am excited to see it as a movie!)

Jollof Rice, adapted from various websites
There is a fair amount of mentions of Nigerian (and American) food in Americanah, but the dish that popped up again and again was Jollof Rice.  My googling revealed it is a common but special Nigerian dish that can be both an "every day" kind of thing or celebratory.  I pieced this version together from various I found on the web, taking a little from here or there, based on what sounded good to me.

Ingredients
1 pound parboiled rice
1 14 ounce can of tomato puree/crushed tomatoes
1 onion, quarted
3 cloves of garlic
4 large red bell peppers, seeded and sliced, putting aside about 1 cup and dice this portion.
1 hot pepper of choice, seeded
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon dried thyme

4 chicken bouillion cubes - Maggi recommended a lot, I used Goya.

Directions:

1. Note on parboiled rice: wash the rice with cold water.  Then put the rice in a pot with twice as much water as rice. Bring to a boil, then turn hit down and cook for 5 minutes.  Drain and rinse the rice, now it is ready for this recipe.
2. Put the tomato, onion, garlic, most of the red pepper and hot pepper into a blender and puree.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large sauce pot over medium heat.  Pour the puree into the pot and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or so to develop deeper flavor.
4. Add the rice, 4 cups of water, the bouillion cubes and the thyme to the pot and stir.  
5. Cook on medium heat until the rice is cooked, about 30 minutes or more.  Stir every 15 minutes.
6. When the rice was ready, I stirred in the diced peppers for some color.
7. I garnished this with jalapeno, but any herbs etc... would be good.