Personal Geographies, Part 2
“The world was wrapped in gauze; she could see the shapes of things but not clearly enough, never enough.”
I remember that feeling when I was newly arrived in the United States, standing in a grocery store for the first time and staring at endless rows of boxes that did not seem, to my Indian eyes, to contain anything even remotely edible.
I remember that same feeling as well from another time, newly arrived in Canada, where many things looked familiar and yet everything was new. The trees too tall, the sky not wide wide enough, the landscape lacking the endless horizon of New Mexico I was by then accustomed to.
Place and its hold on people, or perhaps their hold on it, is as much a part of Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as it is of the probing, beautiful essays of Dorthe Nors. Both books invite rereading. Both left me breathless. Both let me enter worlds I did not know, will never really know. Yet they are rendered familiar, their humanity uncovered, so I am made to feel that I have in fact lived in some version of each of them.
Americanah’s leisurely narration, often interior, leads the reader into byways of the protagonist Ifemelu’s mind, so we feel the tug of Nigeria upon her awareness and her actions. America, in contrast, is most eloquently expressed in the blog posts she creates.
Excerpt:
Understanding America for the Non-American Black: A Few Explanations of What Things Really Mean
1. Of all their tribalisms, Americans are most uncomfortable with race. If you are having a conversation with an American, and you want to discuss something racial that you find interesting, and the American says, “Oh, it’s simplistic to say it’s race, racism is so complex,” it means they want you to shut up already. Because of course racism is complex. Many abolitionists wanted to free the slaves but didn’t want black people living nearby.
This blog of exploring the self and its relation to place and to other selves ends when Ifemelu leaves the US, returns to NIgeria, finds she now needs to figure out what home really is.
But then the blog morphs triumphantly. The real journey isn’t from one place to another and back, but rather into a new self, a self that was unrealized until now.
After I finished the book, I went back and reread the blog posts in sequence, to feel once more the story they created, the story of a woman seeking the voice she knew she had within her but had never been given the chance to express before—on her own terms, in her own way.
Because each of us will see the places we belong to through our own, unique lens. My personal geography, with each awkward revelation of self-in-place, will change and shift and grow into new iterations. One thing will always be true. That inner collage of place and places will be like no one else’s.
