Ifemelu is the novel’s main protagonist. Nigerian-born, she travels to America for college, founds a well-respected blog on race relations, receives a prestigious fellowship at Princeton, and then returns to Nigeria to begin again.

One of Ifemelu’s defining characteristics is her outspokenness. Even as a child, she was “surly” (55) and as a teenager, is unable to keep silent when a thought enters her head. She tells people plainly what she thinks of them, be it sanctimonious women at her church, Aunty Uju, or Obinze. When she first meets Obinze, he tells her that, “‘You looked like the kind of person who will do something because you want to, and not because everyone else is doing it” (73). Ifemelu deeply values independence and her personal success, and is horrified each time Uju uproots her life for a man.

As seen in each of Ifemelu’s romantic relationships, she possesses certain self-destructive tendencies and feelings of restlessness. She destroys her relationship with Obinze by cutting off all contact, ashamed of her own sexual exploitation. She cheats on Curt with a man she does not even like. She abandons Blaine at a time he needs her, and later breaks up with him to return to Nigeria, alone.