AMERICANNAH

Hi people so I’m back to the continuation of this book by Adichie and today we’re going to be looking at Shan and Ifemelu’s statement. Without further lingering, lets start off. Don’t forget we are trying to critic the statement to our benefit and to our intellectual development.

Shan sipped her drink, ” It’s nice how in Europe, white men look at you like a woman, not just a black woman. Now I don’t want to date them, hell no, I just want to know the possibility there is”. Moving over to Ifemelu’s statement. She said “To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context”.

Shan
So narrowing Shan’s statement and trying to break it down, going further she herself wasn’t planning on dating a white man, she just wanted to know the satisfaction in the possibility that she could actually do it. That is what society does to us, Not forgetting society is made up of duplicates of human personalities out there. Some specific persons just set unnecessary barriers and boundaries that people now consider a fit to attain. Practically that was what Shan was trying to do, so she’d probably have a story or two to tell and that’s also what many of us do sometimes. It may not be racial or “bilingual dating” like Shan’s case but then we should learn to personally critic our own actions. Sometimes though we do all those things out of fun and that’s pretty much understandable but anything above fun and scaling to pressure, that’s a (no no)

Lois on Ifemelu
So basically I relate to Ifemelu a lot because majority of times, I see myself in her. To her statement about being a child of the third world, that statement is just to good, real, true and everything you can think of. Indeed, honesty and truth may always depend on the context, the particular place you find yourself. Honesty and truth are no longer really absolute but rather relative, relating to where you find yourself and that’s basically what happens in our society today. I would really love to paint a scenario but nothing is coming to mind now. I guess it is left for you to ponder on these things.