A rasura de uma história única: espaço e trajetória de uma imigrante negra em Americanah, de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the novel Americanah, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The narrative revolves around a young Nigerian couple, Ifemelu and Obinze. After completing high school, both find themselves unable to pursue higher education in Nigeria. Therefore, they decide to leave the country, their destinations being the United States and England, respectively. However, this research will focus solely on Ifemelu. The intention is to understand the relationship between the character, a Black immigrant woman, and the spaces presented in the work, considering the American sociocultural context. Furthermore, it aims to objectively apprehend the conflicts faced by Ifemelu, permeated by racism, sexism, and xenophobia; these oppressions are active in marginalization, especially through language and her hair, central elements in her identity. This research is bibliographic in nature, and in the analysis, we take as fundamental the contributions of theorists of literary criticism, such as Mata (2014, 2020, 2023), Leite (2003), Achebe (2012), Candido (2006), Souza (2021), Morrison (2019), Seligmann-Silva (2018), Pereira (2023) and Gomes (2008), as well as intellectuals linked to the so-called Cultural Studies, among them Bhabha (1998, 2011), Hall (1997, 2003, 2016), Mignolo (2017), and Said (2011). Regarding intersectionality, a concept that will allow us to understand how oppressions operate together in the violence that affects the character Ifemelu in American society, we will focus on Gonzalez (2020), Collins (2019), hooks (2019, 2021), Davis (2016), Alzandúa (2000, 2005), Oyěwùmí (2021), Akotirene (2019), Berth (2020), Nascimento (2022) and Gomes (2019). In addition to these theorists, Fanon (2008, 2022), Munanga (2020, 2008), Mbembe (2018), Césaire (2010) and Santos (2015, 2023) will be important for this work, as their studies are fundamental to understanding spatial segregation and the violence that has permeated Black bodies from the colonization process to the present day. This work will also be guided by the notion of the danger of a single story (Adichie, 2019), as it will allow us to deconstruct eurocentrism surrounding the issues raised throughout the work. Therefore, the aim is to highlight how the literature produced by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie erases the single narratives about certain bodies and reveals other ways of being in the world.