Identidade em trânsito: a experiência diaspórica de Ifemelu em Amaericanah, de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Abstract

The object of this study is the novel Americanah (2013), by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The diaspora subjects‘ posture and standpoint presented in this narrative reveal new ways of think about the issue of immigrant identity in what regard, not only the means in which these subjects live the transnational space, but also what regards the experience of returning to their homeland. In the present study, we focus on the protagonist Ifemelu and her exercise of reflecting on her own diasporic experience as a black female immigrant who identifies herself socially through the contact between cultures, as she acquires new customs and social-linguistic practices she (re)builds herself-identity. We observe how gender, race and migrant identity are intersected in the protagonist's experience and in the reflections she brings up in the blogs she produces both during her individual diaspora trajectory, when she lives in the USA to study, and in her experience going back home to Nigeria, thirteen years later. We observe how gender, race, identity and the notion of belonging are figured in the text, from the critical reflections of Stuart Hall (2014), Hommi Bahbah (2008), Frantz Fanon (2008), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1985, 2014), Michelle Perrot, Bell Hooks (2005), Audre Lorde (2007), among others. In examining the African and Nigerian literary panorama we have the theoretical contribution of Charles E. Nnolim (2009), Chinua Achebe (2012), Eliana Lourenço de Lima Reis (2011), Vincent Khapoya (2015), among others.