Unsettled Identities and Intersections: A Study of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

Abstract

This paper examines the lead characters of the novel Americanah (2013), Ifemelu and her childhood sweetheart, Obinze, who undergo an identity transformation when they immigrate to the United States and England, respectively. Their once-cohesive identities get altered when they experience racialization in these countries. Through Ifemelu, Adichie highlights the experiences and issues faced by Black women in a white-centric culture. Ifemelu has to experience sexism in Nigeria's patriarchal society, but in America, she also undergoes racism in addition to sexism. Similarly, Obinze experiences discrimination as a Black man in England, while in Nigeria, he is a respected citizen who belongs to an upper-middle-class family. The novel has been analysed through the lens of intersectionality to understand how various social factors interact to produce distinct forms of oppression as they migrate from Nigeria to Western countries and how it alters their identities. This multifaceted complexity of social discrimination has been analysed through Leslie McCall's intracategorical approach, which questions the construction of categories and also the existence of the very same categories. As such, the interaction of gender, race and location will be taken into consideration while examining this novel.