Salma & Star
BRIEF OVERVIEW
• The American Embassy focuses its main theme on violence, diaspora, immigrant experience and agency.
• This story is told in flashbacks. It begins when an unnamed women queues at the American Embassy in Lagos
to apply for an asylum visa. She recalls to four nights ago, when her son, Ugonna was tragically murdered by
three men who came to arrest her husband, a journalist, who wrote about the Nigerian government
corruption and their abuse of power, the men held a gun to her head and questioned about her husbands
whereabouts. she recollects that her sons crying noise upstairs caught the attention of those men. And one of
the men turned his gun to him and shot him. Then the story is turned back to the present and the woman is
sitting inside the embassy and she is being questioned by a visa interviewer. When she realised that she will
not use her son as a “hawking” , she and walked right out of the interview towards the exit and did not turn
back.
• The story offers a glimpse into this woman's life in Nigeria during the Abacha regime. It also reminds us that
while the impact of war is far-reaching, and the conflict is on a national scale, the experiences of many of
those living through it are situated in it everyday.
QUESTIONS AND EXAMPLES
Q1 WHAT IS GOING THROUGH THE
WOMAN'S MIND AS SHE WALKS AWAY FROM
THE INTERVIEWER?
She left because she thought it wasn’t worth it, because she could not predict the
future with her husband in America. Also that her son was buried in Nigeria. The
women gave up on the chance of receiving an American visa because she does
not want to sell her son’s tragedy for safety. She also doubt that the interviewer
would believe her as she described her as “the face of a person who did not
understand her, who probably did not cook with palm oil.” (Quote pg141) This
palm oil symbolises the blood in the chest of her son.
Q2 DISCUSS THE TONE OF THE STORY.
The tone of the story is very empty and grieving. The women is trying to keep
her mind blank by being apathetic about everything around her. When the man
behind her nudged off her reverie, “she stared at him for a while, to focus, to
remember where she was.”(Quote pg128)
There were also a tone of contempt and frustration the story when the women
mentions her husband. In the story, she described her husbands actions as being
“not courage, it was simply an exaggerated selfishness.”(Quote pg136) In her
knowledge, Ugonna is killed due to her husband’s sin.
Q3 WHY DO YOU THINK ADICHIE WROTE
THIS STORY?
Adichie wrote this story to reveal the violence and brutality in Nigeria and explain why people are so
desperate to move to America. When the women is lining up, the man behind informed her to “make Ugonna
real, and don’t overreact, because every day people lie to the interviewers to get asylum visas, about relatives
that were never born.”(Quote pg134) Adichie also highlighted the social status of women and how they have to
give up their passion to fulfil their role of being a maternal figure in the family. For example, the women in the
story once was also a journalist, but resigned when she finally got pregnant after four years of trying.
Q4 HOW DO YOU PERCEIVE THE END OF
THE STORY – AS POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?
WHY?
The end of the story is ambiguous and open for interpretation. From one side of
the point, the women as last chose not to “hawk Ugonna for a visa to
safety.”(Quote pg139) However, on the other side, she put her life in the risk of
being attacked by the government and gave up on the chance of beginning a new
life with her husband.
Q5 IS THERE ANY EXPLANATION TO
EXPLAIN THE BRUTALITY OF THE MILITARY
OFFICERS?
The military officers gain their power from the government, however, they are
not purely people that follows the governments instructions. In the story, Adichie
implies that “the government is too freeing”, and “it gave people room to
maneuver and excuse and re-blame.”(Quote pg140) The military officers have
individual thoughts and emotions, and it is human nature for the officers to be
corrupted by power, therefore it shouldn’t be given to people who uses their
power in vain.