(Trans) national Simultaneity in Adichie's Americanah

Abstract

This paper analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah as a transnational narrative and its characters as transnational subjects marked by various forms of simultaneity that is of home, belonging, citizenship, identity and nationality, to name a few. Simultaneity is the situation in which two things happen at the same time or it is the situation of togetherness. And the transnational people represent the possibility of having two identities, two homes, two families and two cultures at the same time. For accomplishing this analysis, I bring some of the key theoretical ideas from the theory of transnationalism which broadly refers to the contemporary way of living in a globalized world in which people can easily make cross-border connections. In this globalized world, people can travel the world physically as well as virtually and this paper explores how Adichie’s Americanah redefines the monolithic ways of looking at the issues of identity, citizenship, home, family nationality etc. Adichie achieves this redefinitions by representing the fictional characters like Ifemelu and Obinze as the Nigerian citizens who travel temporarily across their national borders leaving their loved ones back in Lagos. In spite of being deterritorialized from their original cultural and geographical location too, they make different linkages across their host lands that is their country of immigration to Nigeria. In America, Adichie’s protagonist Ifemelu comes to have a distinct identity, establishes her temporary home and family. After some years in the USA, she also achieves the provision of the American citizenship. Therefore, Adichie makes her characters like Ifemelu and Obinze the transnationals since Adichie aims at redefining the essentialist ways of looking at the issues like identity, citizenship, home, family, nationality and belonging.