laurnoble's Reviews (180)

I knew Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s name only from the Beyoncé song (ladies, tell ‘em). And so when a close friend recommended earnestly her newest novel Americanah, I expected (so, so whitely) a smart and sharp commentary on race, nothing more. A work of nonfiction dressed up in fictional names. And while commentary is certainly a catalyst of the story, one of its strongest flavors, the novel contains multitudes beyond simply that. It is, at its core, a love story: a tale of well aimed psychological depth and emotional heft, where the characters’ feelings can stack on top of you like steep, rolling hills.

Read the entire review on CRITICAL MESS.

"Coates’ language depicts with brutal palpability the pattern of violence and murder that the American economic engine generated at its inception, and which it continues to churn out en masse. His thesis is simple: that 'race' is more than a naturally occurring abstraction which causes some to have and others to have not; that [the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.' And just has he illustrates the manner of that landing, as he grabs the reader’s hand and walks them purposefully through the history of a nation that rests atop a mountain of black bodies, the weight of these violences begins to build upon the reader, compressing the mind into some form of understanding."

Read my entire review on CRITICAL MESS.