Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Title: Half of a Yellow Sun

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published: 2006

Type: Fiction

Pages: 433

‘There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly,' Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better.

In Brief:

Definitely a top-two book of 2020 (so far). Adichie’s writing is heart-aching, her characters are robust, and she educates about a little-known (at least for me) historic tragedy while delving into examinations of love, forgiveness, family, politics, class, and more. 

Rating: 4.7

Synopsis:

First, some context for those who might need it (I would). The title of this book refers to the flag of Biafra, a state that declared independence from Nigeria and existed from 1967-1970. During that time, a terrible war was waged between Nigeria and Biafra and mass starvation decimated the Biafran population– millions died. I knew roughly nothing about any of it before reading this book. 

Half of a Yellow Sun sets the stage early, beginning in 1960. Chapters alternate perspectives: there’s sweet and observant Uguwu, a village teen who becomes a houseboy to Odenigbo, a radical professor. Another perspective we get is that of Odenigbo’s lover Olanna, a wealthy, beautiful, London-educated woman who moves in with Odenigbo and Uguwu early on. Lastly there’s Richard, a British intellectual who is there to study art, but falls in love with Olanna’s bold, enigmatic, and sometimes-estranged twin sister, Kainene. When the book begins, all characters are basically happy – there’s plenty of talk about war, but it’s all intellectual, and just talk. 

However, the situation devolves quickly as conflict rapidly approaches, tensions rise, and war ultimately breaks out. There’s personal betrayal as well as political upheaval. Our characters are forced to leave their homes, pushed to the brink of starvation. They witness and sometimes participate in horrific acts, struggling to survive in the nightmare into which war transformed their worlds. 

Where I’m At:

Two things profoundly affected my reading of this book. The first, simply, is that I am half of a pair of sisters. The relationship between Olanna and Kainene is a central part of the novel, and one that fascinated me. There’s a delicate nuance in the relationship between sisters – the way that similarities and differences become stark, definitional – the way unconditional love has an edge of competition, an unavoidable comparison. There’s a way that my sister and I understand each other without talking, a way she can know exactly what to say, yet also a way that she is the most alien person in my life. Olanna betrays Kainene in a way perhaps only sisters can hurt each other, yet Kainene (eventually) forgives her with a grace perhaps only sisters have for each other. 

The other factor is my experiences living (briefly) as a white woman living abroad. I spent a semester of my junior year of college in Jerusalem, as well as seven months volunteering in St. Vincent and the Grenadines after college. I hated the character of Richard (more on that later), but these experiences made him unfortunately relatable. There was a specific experience of being white in a non-white country (or not-Jewish in a Jewish country – we won’t get too into that now). In both places, I felt a sort of desperation to fit in, to be a part of the world I was living in and cared deeply about, yet I knew that I never could. Their struggles weren’t mine, and all the empathy in the world wouldn’t erase that my skin and birthplace gave me a privilege I never earned, that if things got really bad, my government would evacuate me in a minute. I wasn’t in either place long enough to really learn how I could contribute as an outsider, but I wanted to desperately, and hope to have that experience one day. Though there was some growth, Richard never really seemed to understand or try to understand his place, and I resented him for that. 

Getting Into it:

So to begin – this book is exactly the type of book that I love. To loosely borrow a phrase from one of my co-workers (this was an OP Fiction Alliance book), it’s a character-driven way to learn about a topic I didn’t know much about. It balances personal psychology, questions of redemption and resilience and relationships, with macro-level history. That’s my thing. I think of books like The Kite Runner, which I read at 15 (ten years ago – Jesus Christ) and which first made me care about international politics, which has driven so much of my adult life. I think these sorts of books can be so powerful – they’re educational while bringing out the human core of an issue. I’d want to write a book like this. It makes me giddy to think about. 

Two other thoughts along those lines: the first is that I’m appalled at how little I knew about the Biafran War. Though I’m overall proud of and grateful for the public education I received, it’s such a hugely devastating event in recent history, and it only raised the faintest glimmers of recognition in me, someone who considers herself well-read and aware of international affairs! It humbles me to be reminded of how much there is always to learn. Frankly, it’s also refreshing to be immersed in a story that doesn’t revolve around the United States. 

Second thought about how this book falls squarely into being “my thing”: it has a message that sort of reminds me of War and Peace, but with less snarky cynicism (which is probably more aligned with how I feel). It’s that message that nationalism and political idealism are not the point, that it’s people that matter. In Half of a Yellow Sun, war is mostly something that happens to our characters, not something that they’re actively involved in. Yet, they suffer the consequences – over and over, we’re reminded throughout the book that it’s the ordinary people who suffer the consequences of war, not the upper classes or elite who make the decisions and talk about it. It’s made all the more poignant because yes, originally the characters like Odenigbo were part of the elite clamoring for war, but when it actually happens it’s nothing like they ever imagined, and the consequences are devastating.

Moving on to Richard. I think it was such a brilliant decision to include him as one of the perspectives on Adichie’s part. It isn’t immediately obvious that he should have a third of the book, and at first I sort of bristled at it. Why do we need a white man’s perspective on an African conflict? Is that the only way white people might care? But of course, that’s oversimplifying it.* Even after independence, the British were incredibly influential in African politics, and of course the legacy of colonialism lives on even now. And Richard plays the role of the supposedly “enlightened” colonizer, claiming to be one of the Biafrans, to be beyond racism, but he reveals his prejudice in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. 

When confronting a man he thought might’ve slept with Kainene:

Come back, he wanted to say, Come back here and tell me if you ever laid your filthy black hand on her.

Not-so-subtle. That line twisted my gut. 

I could say a lot more about this book, but I like it enough to not want to spoil it so I’ll just really really recommend it. The writing is beautiful, really vivid and poetic without being overly flowery. Adichie spends time really building up the characters, building their world in the early 1960s with detail, so it’s all the more powerful when she pulls it crashing down with the war. My only real criticisms are that 1)  the time jumping structure seemed unnecessary and the foreshadowing got a bit excessive, and 2) it still fits into my “most books should be under 400 pages” thesis – fifty-ish pages could have easily been shaved off. Better than War and Peace, though. 

I’ll leave with something my co-worker raised in our discussion: If you’re appalled by the situation in Nigeria described in Half of a Yellow Sun, you should look at Yemen today, the civil war and starvation and intolerable number of deaths. These atrocities are still happening, and in the West, our eyes are still mostly closed.

* Also, part of my disgruntledness is that Richard is just sort of a pathetic, mediocre, boring dude. Realistic, though.