World

Lupita Nyong'o to star in movie adaptation of Chimamanda's bestselling novel Americanah

Monday, September 16, 2019 at 6:57 AM by Joseph Omotayo

- Lupita Nyong'o, a very successful Kenyan actress, will be acting as Ifemelu in Americanah by popular Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as the book is adapted for the screen

- According to Warner Media, the company in charge of the screening, the movie will be a 10-episode series

- Danai Gurira, a playwright who has produced very popular and cinema-breaking movies like Black Panther, wrote the screenplay

Nigerian author who is also a pop culture enthusiast, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, will be having her bestselling book, Americanah, adapted for the screen by HBO’s Warner Media.

Popular Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyongo, will be playing the role of Ifemelu, the protagonist that the coming-of age and transatlantic Nigerian-American story revolves around.

According to the Warner Media’s press release, Americanah-adapted movie will be a 10-episode series and the screenplay was written by the enigmatic showrunner, Danai Gurira.

It should be noted that Dania also wrote the plots for box office and very successful movies like Black Panther and Avengers: Endgame.

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Americanah is a postmodernist story that shows the struggle of fitting into a world that demands so much of us in all areas. In the book, Ifemelu leaves Nigerian and migrated to the US after the Nigerian education system failed her.

Leaving the country is not so easy for her as she had to leave not just life and reinvent a new one, but also the love of her life, Obinze. That leaving would later come to hurt her and her teenage lover in many ways than one in the future.

When she gets to America, like many migrants like her, she battles with different cultural shocks and the racism that black people struggle with overseas.

However, the protagonist, with the use of technology and blogging, finds her voice and the reinvention that she seeks seems to have been achieved.

In no distant time, emotions come running again, and the half-lived teenage love life, the longing of things never fully eaten, the need for self-validation, and the nostalgia of one long gone from home become the strong force that she contends with.