Americanah is both a love story that isn't resolved until the final page, and a story of racism in America and how - in one of the novel's most heartbreaking and striking passages, Ifemelu, the protagonist, says, at a dinner party: I come from a country where race was not an issue. I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America ... but we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.

And two more, of the many words that will stay with me: Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it. And, Racism is absurd because it's about how you look ... . It's about the shade of your skin and the shape of your nose and the kink of your hair. Black hair and the difficulty of finding a hairdresser who knows how to cut and style it, and wearing your hair as it naturally comes out of your head or having a weave or styling it in a way that singes your scalp but that makes it appear less Black, is a poignant running metaphor throughout Americanah.

It made me think hard about my white privilege and my subconscious racism. It made me commit, more deeply, to eradicating my racism and becoming an antiracist.