Americanah as a Sex-Positive Bildungsroman Anonymous College

Many feminists deem sex-positive sex education necessary in order to promote safe, consensual, and healthy sex habits in adolescents that will leave an effect that lasts a lifetime. In the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, however, Ifemelu’s journey through learning about herself as a sexual being seems, at times, less than healthy, and certainly not sex-positive. In Nigeria she has no formal sex education to speak of, and what she learns from the women in her community about sex varies from a religious abstinence-only education to a rather sexist one, involving a very boys will be boys attitude. And when Ifemelu goes to America, she sees a very different result of a similarly flawed sex education system: one where racism infiltrates its way into the bedroom on a consistent basis. Yet despite the tumultuous path she takes to get there, Ifemelu ultimately comes out of her adolescence as a sex-positive woman. Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie has a multitude of plots, but Ifemelu’s journey serves in part as a sex-positive bildungsroman.

Adichie’s TED Talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” outlines exactly how feminism is inherently sex-positive. When criticizing globally sexist practices, Adichie says, “we teach girls to...