A New Life in "The American Embassy" by Sarah Britsch

Near the end of Adichie’s “The American Embassy,” the protagonist reflects on her situation and decides how to proceed in her visa interview: “A new life.  It was Ugonna who had given her a new life, surprised her by how quickly she took to the new identity he gave her, the new person he made her….  She wanted to arrange the sucked flowers side by side, like Ugonna had done with his LEGO blocks.  That, she realized, was the new life she wanted….  She walked out of the American embassy” (140, 141).  The first statement, that Ugonna had given her a new life, is two-fold.  The surface meaning is that he gave her a new life when he was born.  Her identity became “Ugonna’s mother,” and that is the only identity the readers are given for her.  The deeper meaning is that Ugonna gave her the new life of fleeing her country to seek asylum.  It is Ugonna’s death that enables her to apply for a visa and find a new/’better’ life.  This second meaning is the reason for her decision to stay.  She decides that she will not use her son’s death as passage to America, and if she must have another life, she wants Ugonna in it as much as possible.  She can’t imagine moving to a place where she cannot access her son’s grave and cannot spend time with him.

This passage reflects many emotions associated with a nation in upheaval.  She wants to feel safe and so attempts to leave and go to another country, but she feels shame for using the death of her son as passage to this safer life she would not otherwise have been given access to.  She is also suppressing mourning in order to do what she knows must be done.  She’d buried Ugonna two days earlier and is now going through all the necessary preparations to completely uproot her life.  In order to do that, she takes medication to numb her mind long enough to get things together.  Because of the chaos in her life, she is not allowed to feel; mourning only gets in the way.

Her decision represents further dilemma: flee to safety or make life as stable as possible here?  She decides to stay and attempt to salvage some normality here in her place of familiarity.  She, like many other victims of the chaos, is not ready to be uprooted, and plans to stay where she feels she belongs despite the danger she believes she is in.  In these few moments, Ugonna’s mother manages to encapsulate multiple emotions and dilemmas created by national upheaval.