Americanah: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Back at the hair salon, Mariama leaves to pick up Chinese food for everyone. Ifemelu says she doesn’t want anything, as she has a granola bar to eat, and the other women are surprised and dismissive of this, until they learn that Ifemelu has been in America for fifteen years. As soon as Mariama leaves, Aisha takes out her cell phone and makes a call. She says that one of her boyfriends can come and talk to Ifemelu about marrying Aisha. Aisha asks if Ifemelu can speak Igbo, and Ifemelu defensively says yes.

Ifemelu slips into a memory about her mother’s hair when she was growing up in Lagos, Nigeria. It was long, thick, and beautiful, and people always complimented it. One day when Ifemelu was ten, her mother comes home and cuts off all of her hair. She puts it in a bag along with all the Catholic objects in their house, and then burns it. She comes back inside and tells Ifemelu that she has been saved, and is going to a new church.

After that day Ifemelu’s mother becomes super-religious, and often starves herself as part of her prayers. Ifemelu’s father remains “an agnostic respecter of religion,” but he humors his wife’s seeming madness, even one Easter when she declares that she sees an angel and runs out of the apartment. She comes back in and says that the angel told her to go to a different church.

Ifemelu’s mother starts going to a different church, and later sees another angel and switches churches again. At her new church the rules are more relaxed, and though she remains enthusiastically religious, she is less obsessed with what is sinful. Ifemelu’s father makes Ifemelu wake up early to pray with them, as it makes her mother happy. At the new church Ifemelu is already suspicious that God is not the reason for the Pastor’s big house and many cars, but she is pleased that her mother is eating again.

As all this is going on, Ifemelu’s father’s sister, Aunty Uju, becomes the mistress of “The General,” a powerful military man who buys her a car and creates a new job for her at the hospital. Ifemelu’s mother sees all this through the lens of her faith, however, and calls The General Aunty Uju’s “mentor,” insisting that all her new financial success is a “miracle.” Aunty Uju has a medical degree, and only weeks earlier she had been unemployed, until she went to a friend’s wedding and met The General. He told her “I like you. I want to take care of you.”

Ifemelu’s father is fired from his job at the federal agency for refusing to call his new boss “Mummy.” He searches for work for a long time but is unsuccessful. When his wife disparages him for losing his job in the first place, he takes her words to heart. Ifemelu feels sorry for him—he has always longed to get graduate degrees, but has been forced to work his whole life to support his siblings instead. He uses big words in English, which impress many people, but Ifemelu comes to learn that this is a “costume,” a way of pretending to be what he is not. He grows more and more depressed, and Ifemelu knows that he regrets not calling his boss “Mummy.”

One Sunday morning the landlord comes by, angry that Ifemelu’s father hasn’t paid the rent. Ifemelu’s mother then comes home from church, wearing makeup that is “one shade too light.” She takes Ifemelu to church to do “Sunday Work”—making fundraising materials or decorating for a holiday. This work is run by Sister Ibinabo, a powerful woman in the church whom everyone respects and fears.

Sister Ibinabo orders Ifemelu to join a group making garlands for a rich man named Chief Omenka. Ifemelu declares that she won’t decorate for a thief, as Chief Omenka and many of the church’s wealthy members and donors are “419 men,” or people who have gotten rich through fraud and scamming. Sister Ibinabo says that this work is still “God’s work,” and she orders Ifemelu to leave.

Ifemelu goes outside and waits for her mother to pick her up, knowing she will be in trouble. Like everyone else, Ifemelu usually says nothing about the “dirty money” that runs the church, but today she was feeling especially repulsed by Sister Ibinabo’s religiosity as a cover for materialism and pettiness. Ifemelu sees the same thing in her own mother—cloaking worldly desires in religion to make them seem more acceptable.

Ifemelu’s mother is angry, and takes her home. Aunty Uju comes to visit, and Ifemelu’s mother tells her to give Ifemelu a talking-to. Aunty Uju and Ifemelu have always been very close, as Uju seems to understand Ifemelu better than her own mother. Uju is Ifemelu’s father’s sister, whom he helped leave their home village and come to Lagos with him. Eventually she went on to university.

Aunty Uju sits with Ifemelu and reminds her that she can’t always speak her mind. Ifemelu asks why her mother can’t accept that Aunty Uju’s gifts are from The General, and must insist they are from God. Uju says that they still might be from God. Ifemelu remembers stories about her own childhood, how only Aunty Uju could calm her down when she was having a tantrum. Uju helped her all her life, including when she met Obinze, “the love of her life.”