Narrating Trans-Cultural Identities in Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah

Abstract

Identity discourses are becoming more focal and prevalent in postcolonial women’s writings. However, these discourses tend to focus more on the female predicament and images as victims of male dominance. This paper seeks to draw attention to the transcultural realities of women. It examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah with the attempt to examine the realities of Nigerian women in the diaspora. Adichie focuses on issues of self-identity, gender, and race with ways women confront, respond to and navigate the complexities of socio-cultural world, defined by the realities of migration and globalisation. Adichie’s fiction revisits the complexities of migration, racism and gender from a transcultural and global perspective. As a way of challenging male dominance, women consciously position themselves as professionals and assert themselves as cosmopolitans to negotiate transcultural selves.