Americanah: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Ifemelu moves to Baltimore. She arrives at the train station and has an Ethiopian taxi driver. He says that she doesn’t look African at all, because her blouse is too tight, and he warns her to not let America “corrupt her.” She then angrily goes into a bathroom to make sure that her blouse isn’t actually too tight. Ifemelu would later write a blog post about this.

Curt likes to tell this story to his friends, who are all like him: white, happy, and wealthy. One day Ifemelu hears Curt use the word “blowhard” in talking to a friend, and the extreme Americanness of the word reminds her that on some level Curt and his friends will “never be fully knowable to her.”

Ifemelu gets her own apartment, but she mostly stays with Curt. They often go on spontaneous trips to other countries, and as she spends more time with him Ifemelu sees just how much he needs to be always doing something. He also seems to need her constant reassurance, both that she enjoys all the traveling and that she enjoys him in bed.

Ifemelu’s hair starts to fall out. Wambui tells her it’s the relaxing chemicals that are making at happen, and she tells Ifemelu to cut her hair and “go natural.” She says that “relaxing your hair is like being in prison,” as you are always doing battle with your hair and trying to make it do what it isn’t meant to do. Ifemelu is convinced, and lets Wambui cut off her hair then and there. Ifemelu then looks in the mirror and thinks she looks horrible.

Curt says she looks good, but Ifemelu is so ashamed that she wears a hat to go out and calls in sick for work the next day. Wambui suggests that she go to “HappilyKinkyNappy.com” to be inspired. Ifemelu decides she’ll do it right away, and she goes to use Curt’s open laptop. He immediately looks frightened and tells her that “the e-mails mean nothing.”

Ifemelu is shocked, as somehow she had never considered that Curt might cheat on her. She reads the e-mails, which are from a blond woman that Curt says he met in Delaware. Nothing ever happened between them, but he didn’t discourage her suggestive flirting. Ifemelu is angry, and especially angry when she looks up the woman and sees her confident, flowing hair. She knows she is being unreasonable, but she gets her things and leaves. Curt apologizes, but makes it seem like it is the woman’s fault, not his own.

Curt comes by later with lots of flowers, and they take a walk, Ifemelu’s hair covered in a headwrap. After that Ifemelu calls in sick for three more days, and then finally goes to work. One of her coworkers asks if her haircut means “something political.” The only other black woman in the company asks if she cut it because she’s a lesbian. Years later, when Ifemelu resigned, the woman would ask if she thought her hair was part of the problem.

Ifemelu peruses HappilyKinkyNappy.com and finds a whole online community of black women embracing their natural hair. Ifemelu starts ordering homemade products for her hair and feels better about herself. One day she is at a farmers’ market, holding hands with Curt, and a black man asks her, “You ever wonder why he likes you looking all jungle like that?” Curt doesn’t hear him, but Ifemelu is upset. Later she goes back on the website and receives more affirmation—it is an almost religious community of women supporting each other. Ifemelu looks in the mirror and realizes that she has fallen in love with her real hair.

There is another post from Ifemelu’s blog, this one about why dark-skinned black women love Barack Obama. Ifemelu says that black people everywhere are always eager to have mixed ancestry or to seem lighter than they are. In modern America, most successful blacks are light-skinned or else marry light-skinned or white people. Barack Obama is different because he broke the mold by marrying a dark black woman. Ifemelu says that dark black women are invisible in American culture (except as a mammy or sassy friend), but they are hopeful that this will change because of Michelle Obama.