Abeer

wtf was that

great introduction to the gaps in capitalism and how a marxist economy could fill those while building upon them. gonna need to read this at least four more times to understand it in its entirety though.

jotting down my thoughts before i forget them:

+'s:
- interesting exploration of race in the USA vs. Nigeria.
- 10 pages of intriguing exploration of the intersection of fatness, blackness, and socioeconomic status (there was so much potential here!!).
- appreciated the realistic, raw portrayal of the life of a temporary foreign worker in a country like the UK.
- loved seeing history repeat itself with how Ifemelu's life ended up mirroring that of Aunty Uju's towards the end of the book.

-‘s:
- this book did Not need to be as long as it was. it stretched and meandered and twiddled its thumbs with seemingly no end goal in mind. at certain points, i'd have to stop and question what the point of it all even was, with the vast amounts of topics covered in a shallow manner and slow progress to come with it. ultimately, it felt repetitive, dull, and tedious to read.
- this book felt reminiscent of something a middle schooler would want to write: a self-insert collection of personal anecdotes sewn together haphazardly, to form what can only be called a narrative on a technicality, as a means of self-righteously declaring all that they have “discovered” about the human condition through their lens which, without a doubt, is more correct and informed than anyone else's.
- Ifemelu is Adichie and Adichie is Ifemelu. as mentioned earlier, this book was essentially a self-insert, which i realised halfway through, is the case for most of Adichie's other books. this reflects either a lack of willingness or a lack of ability (or both) to see and express narratives from a perspective that isn't one's own. it reveals limited nuance as an author which i'm not the biggest fan of.
- on that note, Ifemelu was an unlikeable character. she was “not like other girls”, acted as though the world revolved around her, and constantly judged everyone and everything around her from an assumed position of superiority. she also lied and cheated on partners and consistently got away with it with the scapegoat being “race”. towards the end, there was also a fair amount of anti-religious sentiment from her end which just didn't sit right with me.
- the love story (which i didn't even realise was the main point of this book until the last ~50 pages) sucked. it felt rushed and shallow - mostly lust-based.
- the side characters were almost always one-dimensional.

read this while sleep-deprived on Dec 31, 2024 purely because i needed a short book to complete my Reading Challenge and remembered that this was Chandler's (from Friends) favourite book as a kid. don't remember a thing though.

i'm not doing this book justice by consuming it as an audiobook. i'll likely pick it up again in the future to read physically.