Janelle Asked to the Bedroom – A Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story for The New York Times
Melania Trump is apparently lonely, obsessed with Michelle Obama and a bit racist — at least that’s the story according to acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
In a new short story commissioned for and by The New York Times Book Review, Adichie imagined an exchange between the first lady, whom she refers to as “Mrs. T” in the text, and her black Pilates instructor, Janelle.
The micro-novel is titled Janelle Asked to the Bedroom, and paints Trump as a forlorn, reluctant first lady and wife of a president who expresses unease with her political fame.
Her Pilates instructor into her bedroom, instead of their usual meeting place in the first lady’s home gym. Janelle is surprised to find her “disheveled” and her manner appearing “distracted.”
There, Mrs T, who Adichie described in her story as envious of her predecessor’s ease into the first lady role, reveals to Janelle a video of Michelle Obama visiting a classroom and photos of her she’s saved to her laptop that she says she looks at for “inspiration.”
The first lady is also portrayed in the story as displaying casual racism her husband, President Trump, has been accused of sharing.
When Janelle tells Mrs T that her son was admitted into Harvard University, Mrs T responds, asking, “He got scholarship to go?”
“How automatic, this assumption of a scholarship, and Janelle knew she meant a scholarship not of smarts but of skin,” Adichie penned in her account.
Adichie’s short story follows another text she wrote for the Times earlier last year in the months leading up to the presidential election, in which she portrayed the first lady as quietly doubting Trump’s chance of winning.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2017. 6:35 p.m. [GMT]
emotanafricana.com 
October 25, 2017
Arts & Culture, Nigeria, USA, Women