Four braids wrap around the cover of Americanah, tying the stories and experiences of race within. Stories about running your own race and how it changes your mobility in different places. Stories of understanding power. In Americanah, Adichie uses hair as a metaphor for race and the level of power it confers, challenging the assumptions of her target audience, white Western liberals, about race and the depth to which racial inequality is rooted in America today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayAmericanah, a history of modern conceptions of race, begins insightfully with a trip from Princeton University to a trade show hairdressing salon in Trenton, where the power play takes place throughout the story. Adichie clearly shows the distance, literally and metaphorically, between "the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced stores and the calm, steady air of earned grace" (3) with very few other black people, and the neighborhood she can get. her hair was styled. This Adichie describes in stark contrast: “the part of town that had graffiti, damp buildings and no white people” (10). Over the first ten pages, Adichie has established opposing worlds of race and correlated power. This is the main setting where hair, and the power it symbolizes, “happens.” What happens here will rightly be interspersed with the stories of Ifemelu and Obinze's experiences in countries that Adichie describes as places where white privilege and power dictate society. In the living room, the audience sees the same power dynamics that occur in the protagonists' stories. Simultaneously unfolding are stories of African immigrants trying to integrate into Western society, all of whom come from different countries and may even speak different languages, for example Mariama's interspersed speech. French dialogues. Aisha, like Obinze, is desperate to obtain citizenship through marriage. There is also a certain respect for those who are more Americanized, as evidenced by Ifemelu's offense when Aisha assumes that she has not lived long in America, and Aisha's respectful reaction when Ifemulu tells her that this fifteen years old (19). deep-seated ideal of power that is associated with America and its “people.” Adichie shows us this ideal embedded in white privilege with Kelsey's remarkable appearance. The moment the “young white woman entered” (232), the power dynamic in the room changed. Landlady Mariama, who had greeted Ifemulu casually and paid him little attention, suddenly "wiped her hands over and over in front of her shorts" and "smiled an overeager smile" (232). White-skinned Kelsey is given respect and power the moment she sets foot in the place where America's racial issues are represented. Kelsey easily accepts and fulfills the role she unconsciously plays in her society, having the power and privilege of being white. She is undoubtedly given and takes a voice in the room, dominating the conversation. Quick to condescend, Kelsey assumes that Mariama "couldn't even have this business in [her] country" (232), that her children would have a Life is Worse in Mali, Mariama's home country, and questions social progress by asking whether women are allowed to vote. Kelsey represents the assumptions that those in power are capable of making, following the dialogue of the Afropolitan novels that Adichie aims to critique.. 2017.