A Place to Belong
Discuss Ifemelu’s roles in the various “communities” she participates in. How does she feel about her participation in these communities?
Every one of us struggles with the idea of identity and the concept of belonging. This is, perhaps, the most important requirement of being human. We are born into certain communities, and as we continue to go through life, we join and leave other communities, sometimes even creating our own. Ifemelu is no different, and in the first chapter of Americanah we find her caught in between many different communities.
As a popular blogger, Ifemelu plays a large role in the online activist community. She can even be considered a leader in this community, because although she make never explicitly calls for action she does incite discussion of the racial tension in America. Her internet family has shaped Ifemelu in many ways, paradoxically building her up and breaking her down. When her blog begins to garner widespread attention, she is “exhilarated” and “frightened” by the commentary her readers would bring to the blogosphere. She feels intimidated by the level of knowledge and breadth of perspectives her readers bring to her posts. This sense of nervousness and attention makes her feel a need to impress in her writing. She can no longer simply write what came to mind with ease, and instead becomes a “vulture hacking into the carcasses of people’s stories for something to use.” The more she writes on her blog, the more she stops believing in herself, eventually reaching the point where she must finally end it.
The source of Ifemelu’s writing comes her participation as a black community member. All of her experiences in America have surrounded the simple fact that she is a woman of color. Her interactions with people, both black and white, and the way she perceives the world are colored by her racial status. In a way, there is a strong network of support Ifemelu finds in the black community. Her boyfriend Blaine, her online readers, the strangers who inspire her blog posts, are all members of the black community who have given her the strength to express her thoughts and opinions. Although she is not an African America, many people for color can relate to her views and experiences simply because they are of the same community.
The issue, however, is that Ifemelu feels like an outsider within the black community in America, for she is not an American herself. As a Nigerian immigrant, she can never completely immerse herself with African American culture, and even separates herself from it within the title of her blog, “Raceteenth or Various Observations American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.” The immigrant community is a strange one for her, as she cannot relate to those members who are not from Nigeria. From her color dye number four to the scouring of Nigerian websites, Ifemelu can never forgot her roots. Her homeland beckons her to return, and soon she decides she must go back in order to find a community where she truly belongs.
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3 Responses to “A Place to Belong”
I complete agree with your observation that Ifemelu did not feel at ease with her community. I mentioned that she had to create her own role and community through her “blogosphere” but you made an excellent observation that she has that taken from her when the community begins to define what Ifemelu’s role should be instead of allowing her to create her own work. I think Ifemelu tends to move onto the next community when she feels like she doesn’t belong anymore. Hence her moving to America, her moving around in America, getting into blogging and eventually moving back to Nigeria. Great post, Pragya!
While I think we all identified the “blogosphere” as one of Ifemelu’s most important communities, I personally overlooked her later feelings about the blog, particularly when she begins to see the blog as insincere and more of a job than a pleasant hobby. I guess that does tie into what you mentioned about joining, and later leaving, communities. Just as Ifemelu slowly grew out (physically and emotionally) of her home in Nigeria, she also grows out of her blogging community. You might think that, because she creates her community herself, she might be able to maintain it, but, as more and more people join her fabricated community, it starts to bend to the wills of her readers, which is something I failed to consider in my analysis.
I completely agree with your opening paragraph about how we all stuggle with identity. Not many people realize it, but it is definitely a struggle that we all battle with daily. I also really enjoy your paragraph about her role in her blogging community. It offered for me a new view on what her blog meant to her. I had never saw it in the light of “the more she wrote it the less she believed in herself until she had to end it”, but in a sense this is true. She does write less and less from her own mind, always scouring people and events for something to blog about.