October 23, 2014 - 13:02
After Ifemelu has the traumatizing experience with the tennis coach in Ardmore, she’s left feeling wretched and alone. She experiences all of the symptoms used to describe depression, but she refuses to let the word depression define the state she’s in. It seems that mental health issues are, to her, a reality experienced only by Americans who are too self-obsessed to consider anything but their own lives and feelings. By comparing Ginika’s and Aunty Uju’s responses to depression, I can see that one’s perception of mental health and the importance of the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals is completely socially constructed. I know that discussions of mental health are classed, and that those conversations have a certain amount of privilege attached to them, but to see it so starkly has been eye-opening for me. In her phone call with Aunty Uju, Ifemelu wants desperately for some kind of comfort or understanding. She tries to hint at what happened, but Uju doesn’t understand. When Ifemelu finally tells her to ask what she did to earn the hundred dollars, she hangs up the phone, and can’t bring herself to tell her aunt. Adichie leaves that scene without fully explaining whether or not Uju understands what her niece had to done, but it’s implied that a discussion like that would not be acceptable.
Perhaps it is Aunty Uju’s slightly older age that keeps her steeped in Nigerian culture and social norms while people like Ginika are more willing to adapt to American social norms. Without any verbal prompting from Ifemelu, Ginika is able to see signs of depression in her friend. “Ifem, this is something a lot of people go through, and I know it‘s not been easy for you adjusting to a new place and still not having a job. We don’t talk about things like depression in Nigeria but its real. You should see somebody at the health center. There’s always therapists” (160). Because Ginika has, to a certain extent, left some of her Nigerian identity behind in order to adopt a new Americanized identity, mental health is not a stigmatized subject in the way it is for Uju. However, she is able to see that it’s difficult for Ifemelu to talk about it because of their shared Nigerian upbringing.
Later on the topic of mental health is brought up again, and it’s clear that Uju views the search for identity as similarly unimportant as the idea of depression. “Everybody is conflicted, identity this, identity that. Somebody will commit murder and say it is because his mother did not hug him when he was three years old. Or they will do something wicked and say it is a disease that they are struggling with” (219). The way she talks about identity and mental health as an excuse for bad behavior makes me think that the way privileged Americans (this is a huge generalization) think about mental health is, to Uju, a contrived struggle and one that is not real in the same way her own personal struggles are real to her. What does Ifemelu’s reaction to depression say about her own changing cultural identity? I hope we can talk more in class about the connections between mental health and class in Americanah and at Bryn Mawr. I think there are some interesting conversations to be had about this topic.