Critical reviews
In her review for San Francisco Chronicle , Catherine Chung wrote, "Americanah is an exhilarating, mind-expanding pleasure of a read. It is a brilliant treatise on race, class and globalization, and also a deep, clear-eyed story about love — and how it can both demand and make possible the struggle to become our most authentic selves". [4] Kristy Davis of Oprah Daily wrote that the novel is "an expansive, epic love story. It pulls no punches with regard to race, class and the high-risk, heart-tearing struggle for belonging in a fractured world", [5] while NPR wrote that "Adichie weaves whole entries into the narrative, and these tart editorials add yet another dimension to Americanah, which is as capacious, absorbing and original a novel as you will read this year". [6] Eugenia Williamson of The Boston Globe wrote, "a cerebral and utterly transfixing epic...Americanah is superlative at making clear just how isolating it can be to live far away from home". [7] Mike Peed of The New York Times Book Review wrote that it is "a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us...A steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience". [8]
In her review for The Washington Post , Emily Raboteau praised the author, writing that "Adichie is uniquely positioned to compare racial hierarchies in the United States to social striving in her native Nigeria. She does so in this new work with a ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both nations". [9] The Dallas Morning News called the novel "a bright, bold book with unforgettable swagger that proves it sometimes takes a newcomer to show Americans to ourselves". [10] John Timpane of The Philadelphia Inquirer acknowledged that "Americanah tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk", [11] while Vogue and The Seattle Times wrote that "Americanah is that rare thing in contemporary literary fiction: a lush, big-hearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique" [1] and "a near-flawless novel", [12] respectively.
In a review for The Chicago Tribune , Laura Pearson wrote, "sprawling, ambitious and gorgeously written, 'Americanah' covers race, identity, relationships, community, politics, privilege, language, hair, ethnocentrism, migration, intimacy, estrangement, blogging, books and Barack Obama. It covers three continents, spans decades, leaps gracefully, from chapter to chapter, to different cities and other lives". [13]
