Americanah

“Of course, there’s the niche of white men in this country who will only date black women, but that’s a kind of fetish and it’s nasty,” Shan said, and then turned her glowing gaze on Ifemelu.

Ifemelu was almost reluctant to disagree; it was strange, how much she wanted Shan to like her. “Actually my experience has been the opposite. I get a lot more interest from white men than from African-American men.”

“Really?” Shan paused. “I guess it’s your exotic credential, that whole Authentic African thing.”

It stung her, the rub of Shan’s dismissal, and then it became a prickly resentment directed at Blaine, because she wished he would not agree so heartily with his sister.

Shan’s phone rang again. “Oh, that had better be David!” She took the phone into the bedroom.

“David is her editor. They want to put this sexualized image, a black torso, on her cover and she’s fighting it,” Blaine said.

“Really.” Ifemelu sipped her drink and flipped through an art magazine, still irritated with him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

Shan was back. Blaine looked at her. “All okay?”

She nodded. “They’re not using it. Everyone seems to be on the same page now.”

“That’s great,” Blaine said.

“You should be my guest blogger for a couple of days when your book comes out,” Ifemelu said. “You would be amazing. I would love to have you.”

Shan raised her eyebrows, an expression Ifemelu could not read, and she feared that she had been too gushing. “Yes, I guess I could,” Shan said.

Obama Can Win Only If He Remains the Magic Negro

His pastor is scary because it means maybe Obama is not the Magic Negro after all. By the way, the pastor is pretty melodramatic, but have you been to an old school American Black church? Pure theater. But this guy’s basic point is true: that American Blacks (certainly those his age) know an America different from American Whites; they know a harsher, uglier America. But you’re not supposed to say that, because in America everything is fine and everyone is the same. So now that the pastor’s said it, maybe Obama thinks so too, and if Obama thinks so then he isn’t the Magic Negro and only a Magic Negro can win an American election. And what’s a Magic Negro, you ask? The black man who is eternally wise and kind. He never reacts under great suffering, never gets angry, is never threatening. He always forgives all kinds of racist shit. He teaches the white person how to break down the sad but understandable prejudice in his heart. You see this man in many films. And Obama is straight from central casting.

CHAPTER 36

It was a surprise birthday party in Hamden, for Marcia, Blaine’s friend.

“Happy birthday, Marcia!” Ifemelu said in a chorus with the other friends, standing beside Blaine. Her tongue a little heavy in her mouth, her excitement a little forced. She had been with Blaine for more than a year, but she did not quite belong with his friends.

“You bastard!” Marcia said to her husband, Benny, laughing, tears in her eyes.

Marcia and Benny both taught history, they came from the South and they even looked alike, with their smallish bodies and honey complexions and long locs grazing their necks. They wore their love like a heavy perfume, exuding a transparent commitment, touching each other, referring to each other. Watching them, Ifemelu imagined this life for her and Blaine, in a small house on a quiet street, batiks hung on the walls, African sculptures glowering in corners, and both of them existing in a steady hum of happiness.

Benny was pouring drinks. Marcia was walking around, still stunned, looking into the trays of catered food spread on the dining table, and then up at the mass of balloons bobbing against the ceiling. “When did you do all this, baby? I was just gone an hour!”

She hugged everyone, while wiping the tears from her eyes. Before she hugged Ifemelu, a wrinkle of worry flickered on her face, and Ifemelu knew that Marcia had forgotten her name. “So good to see you again, thank you for coming,” she said, with an extra dose of sincerity, the “so” emphasized, as though to make up for forgetting Ifemelu’s name.

“Chile!” she said to Blaine, who hugged her and lifted her slightly off the floor, both of them laughing.

“You’re lighter than you were on your last birthday!” Blaine said.

“And she looks younger every day!” Paula, Blaine’s ex-girlfriend, said.

“Marcia, are you going to bottle your secret?” a woman whom Ifemelu did not know asked, her bleached hair bouffant like a platinum helmet.

“Her secret is good sex,” Grace said seriously, a Korean-American woman who taught African-American studies, tiny and slender, always in stylishly loose-fitting clothes, so that she seemed to float in a swish of silks. “I’m that rare thing, a Christian left-wing nut,” she had told Ifemelu when they first met.

“Did you hear that, Benny?” Marcia asked. “Our secret is good sex.”

“That’s right!” Benny said, and winked at her. “Hey, anybody see Barack Obama’s announcement this morning?”