Liminality, Diasporic Melancholia and Small Redemption. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 8,5, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, course: Ethnic Studies, language: English, abstract: In the present paper I embed Ifemelu's migration to America in the broader diaspora of Africans to the United States which is undertook in search of more favourable education and career prospects. That said, I would like to suggest that diasporans could potentially comprise the par excellence hybrid identity that Homi Bhabha has championed in the development of his postcolonial theory of identity formation. I argue that Americanah poses a substantial challenge to hybridity and mimicry-based cultural identities by accentuating the very limitations of these models; namely, that they seriously overlook the psychic trauma caused by the loss of cultural authenticity due to the disconnection from the motherland and by the identity reinvention undertaken in the host country. It is my thesis that Ifemelu is affected by diasporic melancholia. Adapting Sigmund Freud's concept of melancholia in the context of diaspora theory I seek to demonstrate that the inarticulate loss of the motherland and…

Издательство

GRIN Verlag GmbH

Год

2018

Страниц

24

Язык

английский

ISBN

9783668764828