Americanah

Ginika meets Ifemelu at the Philadelphia bus terminal. Ifemelu notices that Ginika is “much thinner, half her old size” (149). Ginika gives Ifemelu a tour of the city, pointing out important landmarks, lapsing into dated Nigerian slang, and educating Ifemelu on current American slang. “Half caste” should be replaced by “biracial,” and to be “thin” is a good thing (151). Ginika introduces Ifemelu to her diverse set of friends, and Ifemelu grows self-conscious about how little she knows about beer, language, and music. “Ginika had come to America with the flexibility and fluidness of youth” (152) but Ifemelu feels too old to adapt.

She and Ginika go shopping for clothes, and an incident at a boutique alerts Ifemelu to the fact that Americans go to great lengths to pretend to be colorblind. Ginika offers to let Ifemelu stay with her, but her apartment is too far from school and the commute would be too expensive. Instead, she moves into a room in West Philadelphia with three white girls. She struggles to fit in with her roommates, attending a frat party and misunderstanding the rules of eating out in America. She decides that tipping feels “suspiciously like bribing, a forced and efficient bribing system” (158). 

Ifemelu goes on a job interview for a home health aide, pretending to be the woman whose Social Security card she has. She forgets her “name” and the employer deems her too small to help lift an ailing man. “Her autumn of half blindness had begun, the autumn of puzzlements” (160). Though she applies for a variety of jobs, she is rarely invited to interviews and has no job offers. She quickly runs out of money and worries about what will happen if she cannot pay her school fees. Writing to Obinze and speaking to Dike on the phone buoys her spirits temporarily, and she is thrilled to receive a credit card preapproval in the mail, with her name spelled correctly. “Somebody knew her” (162).