Ifemelu, The Ifemelu Project
The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And her novel Americanah.
It is a story that beautifully expresses the subtle emotions and struggles of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman navigating life in the U.S. as an immigrant. At the same time, the novel sharply critiques the racial dynamics of American society, making it feel like a work of social commentary.
To me, a hopeless book lover, if someone asked which book I’ve read the most or the most frequently, I would easily answer this one. I love this book. It has profoundly influenced me.
The novel gives voice to the emotions of being on the margins, of occupying in-between spaces, using the gentle power of literature. That’s the power of the humanities: it changes people and drives action not through force or dominance, but through resonance. It inspired me deeply. That inspiration fuels my work: in African regional studies, research on African migrants in Korea, text analysis of Americanah, and anthropological fieldwork on emotion and borders — research that often defies categorization.
(Just yesterday, I attended an event by Africa Insight and had a chat with the director Heo. I congratulated him on the organization’s recent award from WARESA (World African Researchers, Engineers, Entrepreneurs & Scientists Alliance) for being the “Best NGO for Africa.” During our talk, I told him, “I believe in what I’m doing, but honestly, I don’t know how to place myself when all of this is over — because what I do doesn’t fit into any typical box.”
He replied, “There are some things in this world that aren’t easily categorized, but they still need to be done. You’re a pioneer. Keep carving that path.”
The main character Ifemelu writes about the U.S., a place where she constantly becomes a “Black woman” within a racialized structure — even though she’d never considered herself Black in Nigeria.
Get Korean Africanist’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Even when she’s going through harsh realities — working as a babysitter, feeling humiliation and defeat, and eventually being pushed into providing sexual services online to survive — she doesn’t let those experiences crush her. She stacks them like bricks, building a piercing critique of a world where race has become class. And through that, she connects with the world. She becomes a widely known social commentator, transcending her earlier hardships.
What does Ifemelu look like, I wonder? I’ve never seen her, but I can almost believe she is Adichie herself. Before COVID, there were plans for a miniseries adaptation of Americanah with Lupita Nyong’o cast as Ifemelu. The pandemic halted production, but ever since, I often imagine Ifemelu looking like Lupita: confident, sensitive, sometimes defiant.
Until now, my role models were the Nardal sisters — intellectuals who opened up discursive spaces for identity and resistance during the Negritude movement in colonized Francophone Africa.
And now, I add one more: Ifemelu. When I’m writing at the edge of boundaries, when my heart is shaken by what I say or write, I think to myself: I will become Ifemelu. I want to be like her.
So, I’ve named my ongoing work of translating and sharing my writing in English, quietly and step by step, the Ifemelu Project.
The fictional Ifemelu gives me courage. She gives me strength to live through today.
This is what I believe in: the power of the humanities to stir human emotion. I hope the Ifemelu Project takes me somewhere I dream of becoming.
