Americanah: Chapter 42 Summary & Analysis

Obinze checks his email obsessively, but it takes four days for Ifemelu to respond. Obinze looks up more things about Blaine, and is disappointed to find himself interested by the articles Blaine has written. Ifemelu sends Obinze a short email, and Obinze responds by telling her about his mother’s death. His mother had been somehow disappointed by his extravagant new wealth, and the state of academia in Nigeria made her more and more sad, which made Obinze sad as well. She died at home in her bed. Her funeral devolved into a fight about the caterers stealing the meat.

Ifemelu writes back an hour later. She says she is crying, and that Obinze’s mother was the only adult other than Aunty Uju “who treated me like a person with an opinion that mattered.” She says she is going through some pain right now too, and is with Aunty Uju and Dike. She asks Obinze to give her his phone number.

The email makes Obinze feel better, and he hopes that Ifemelu has broken up with Blaine. He tries to imagine how America might have changed her. He sends her a short but intimate email, but then immediately regrets it. Many days pass and he realizes she isn’t going to respond. Obinze starts sending her more emails, telling her the story of his time in England, and he realizes it is the first time he has really reflected on it.

Finally Ifemelu replies, apologizing for her silence. She says that Dike attempted suicide, and she has become depressed again, but is spending lots of time watching movies with Dike. Obinze reads the email and is shocked, as he can only remember Dike as a toddler. Obinze wishes he could go to Ifemelu right now, but realizes how absurd that is.

Obinze’s wife, Kosi, interrupts his thoughts. She thinks he is distracted by work. They are driving to a school to visit it with Kosi’s friends Jonathon and Isioma, to see if it would be a good school for Buchi, Obinze’s daughter. Obinze has only met Jonathon and Isioma once. He thought Isioma was interesting, but she constantly downplayed her own intelligence to avoid bruising Jonathon’s ego.

At the school Obinze, Kosi, Jonathon, and Isioma talk with the headmistress. She declares that many “high-level expatriates” send their children there, and knows how impressive this will sound to most Nigerians. Later they watch the children put on a Christmas play, where there is fake snow on the stage. Isioma asks why they are teaching the children that there has to be snow for it to really be Christmas. Kosi can tell that Obinze is distracted.

At home Obinze reads all the posts from Ifemelu’s blog. He is surprised by the slangy American voice in her writing, and cringes when he reads posts about her boyfriends. He reads one about “Professor Hunk” (Blaine) being stopped by the police and searched for drugs. Blaine said he had a high school teacher who told him to focus on getting a sports scholarship, because “black people are physically inclined and white people are intellectually inclined.” Blaine had then spent years proving her wrong. Reading Ifemelu’s posts makes Obinze sad, as she has experienced so much without him that she sometimes seems unrecognizable.