CHAPTER - 4

“I only became black when I came to America”: Problematics and Process of Nigerian
Diasporic Identity in Adichie’s Americanah (2013)

I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as
black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in
America and you fall in love with a white person, race does not matter when you
are alone together because it is just you and your love. But the minute you step
outside, race matters. (Adichie, 2013, p. 212)
4. 1. Overview
In Adichie’s Americanah (2013), there are certain themes for discussion such as racism, clashes
based on cultural differences, corruption, immigration and so on; however, this chapter, keeping in mind
the parameters of study, deals with the problems and process of diasporic identity. Diasporic identity,
starting with displacement and fluctuating among mimicry, hybridity, and ambivalence, is a never-ending
process. At the beginning of the chapter, brief introductory comments are given about the novel and the
author in order to contextualize the chapter and make it easy for understanding.
In order to answer the first question of exploring the role assimilation and mimicry in diasporic
identity, the character of Ifemelu has been analysed through Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. The second
question of why and how far the selected diasporic Afro-Asian fiction did resist the dominant discourses of
identity and belongingness through ambivalence is addressed by showing Ifemelu’s resistance through her
ambivalent actions and reactions. The chapter further addresses the third question of how do the
protagonists counter conflicts by showing Ifemelu’s dealing with conflicts such as identity crises, alienation
and unhomeliness, and inbetweeness.
4. 2. Introduction
Chimamanda is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. She was born on 15th September,
1977 in Enugu, Nigeria and grew up in Nsukka, in the house where previously Nigerian writer Chinua
Achebe lived. She started writing when she was very young. She received her education mostly in English;
however, she also studied the Igbo language at school level. She initially started her university education
in Nigeria; however, she could not continue her studies as she had to to move to America in her early
twenties. She obtained admission into a “Communication and Political” degree course in Philadelphia. She
then moved to Coventry to continue her education there and obtained her masters degree from Yale
University and John Hopkins University. She also obtained a “Fellowship from Princetown”. Chimamanda
started her writing career by writing short stories, plays, and poetry. However, she marked her entry in the
literary circle by writing Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half a Yellow Sun (2006) The Things Around Your
Neck (2009) and Americanah (2013). Besides fiction writing, she has also written some non-fictional
essays entitled We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in
Fifteen Suggestions (2017) and has given a couple of TED talk lectures containing her well-known talk,
“ The Danger of The Single Story” (Adichie, 2009).
Chimamanda rapidly became famous at a very early age. Through her “ young yet rapid career”,
according to Duckham (2017) Chimamanda has “ propelled herself on the international scene and is
now a well-established Afropolitan feminist author who is concerned with questions and problems of
immigration, race, gender, and political affairs in Nigeria and globally”. In “Of French Fries and
Cookies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Diasporic Short Fiction”, Tunca in the book “African Presence
in Europe and Beyond” is of the view that:
 While Adichie draws upon the influence of previous generations of Nigerian authors in her
work, her extensive interest in the progressive formation of cross-cultural identities bears
considerable relevance to the contemporary Nigerian context(s). She has undoubtedly become
one of the major voices of the country‘s third generation of writers, whether their home lies in
Africa, Europe, America or in the luminal spaces between. (2010, p. 309)
Chimamanda is also described in The Times Literary Supplement by James Copnall, as " the
most prominent" of a " procession of critically acclaimed young Anglophone author who is succeeding
in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature" (p. 20).
Americanah is a story of a couple that experiences migratory life separately namely Ifemelu and
her high school classmate Obinze. Both have high notions about America and longing to go there. However,
Ifemelu gets an opportunity to get a student’s visa and goes to America at the age of nineteen. After some
struggles, she becomes a popular blogger and presenter who demonstrates her ideas very effectively on the
issues of race and racism. Obinze on the other hand is not as lucky and cannot realize his longtime dreams
of going to America. After doing his graduation in Nigeria, he moved to UK willy-nilly along with his
mother and stayed there without proper legal documents. After some time, he was detained and was
immediately deported back to Nigeria before he could marry a woman with a European Union passport.
Chimamanda’s Americanah through the love story of Ifemelu and Obinze describes diasporic
condition and its issues. Among other issues, the issue of race and gender becomes central to the story in
the novel as the characters moved from Nigeria to UK and US. These issues caused emotional impact on
the transformation procedure of the diasporic subject. Adichie pushes the diasporic experience by going
full circles and by making two of her characters returned to their home countries. In the processes of
diasporic journey, they faced many problems; as a result, their identities became problematic (Duckham,
2017, p. 2).
Americanah has attracted the attention of literary critics especially for its coverage across divergent
societies in Nigeria, UK, and US as they were reflections of global tensions. Writing for The New York
Times, Mike Peed said, “ Americanah is an examination of blackness in America, Nigeria and
Britain, but it is also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience— a platitude
made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie's observations” ( Peed, 2013). Peed concluded, “ Americanah
is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel
that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false” (June 7,
2013). Reviewing the novel for The Washington Post, Emily Raboteau called Adichie “ a hawkeyed
observer of manners and distinctions in class” and said Adichie brings a " ruthless honesty about the
ugly and beautiful sides of both the United States and Nigeria” (10th June, 2013).
The present study is a detailed analysis of diasporic situation, experienced by major characters in
the novel; how these diasporic experiences problematize their identities and how these experiences affect
the bonds of love, changed their personalities and cultural views, and reinterpret their identities, are this
study’s major theoretical engagements.
4. 3. Depiction of Diasporic Experiences
In today’s borderless world people keep on migrating to other countries, producing a non-stop flow
of mixing culture, language, and race. The reasons for migration varies from person to person, however,
the urge to assimilate to the host culture, is the foremost wish of all immigrants. The diffusion, through
hybridity of different cultures, causes problems for immigrants in a host land. This can be seen in
Americanah where all characters, on moving to a new land, wished to assimilate with the host culture
through mimicry in order to get acceptance in the host society. An attempt has been made to explore whether
hybridity and its elements exist in the main character of the novel, Ifemelu and if they do, how do they
contribute to her diasporic experiences.
Americanah reflects on the sensibilities and problematics of all characters caused by displacement
and their strategies to cope with them. The present chapter attempts to explore, interpret, and analyse
problematics caused by displacement and the remedies adopted by different characters as reflected in the
novel.
4. 3. 1. Mimicry
“Colonial mimicry”, for Bhabha is the need for “ a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject
of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 86-122). Bhabha asserts that
“mimicry” is not a simple imitation of a dominant culture of host country but it an an exaggeration of
imitating it. Such imitation has been termed a “ sly civility” (Bhabha, 1984, p. 86). In his essay “Of
Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”, he pinpoints “mimicry” as one of the most
subtle and dynamic approaches in “colonial discourse” that focuses on “civilizing mission” that is based on
the idea of “human and not wholly human” (1984, p. 126). Such colonial discourse is used in diasporic
situation where immigrants are compeled, through the dominant narrative of belonging, to surrender their
native culture and adopt the host culture.
In Americanah the characters have difficulties to find a genuine and acceptable position in the host
society during or after the societal changes. They are compeled to take between accepting and resisting the
host cultures. In order to assimelate the “reformed, noticeable Other”, the Other has to imitate the host
culture, such imitations is called mimicry. The society of the host country in the novels tries hard to impose
their host culture on the people in a diasporic situation to create a hybrid copy of them.
In Americanah, Adichie describes Ifemelu, the protagonist of the novel, as a character who is shown
immitating the host society to be accepted in the host society. She feels compelled firstly to give up her
Nigerian identity and secondly starting to learn to adapt the dominant identity of host society, especially
looks and language (Fanon, 1952). The colonized are made to feel that their language is not up to the mark.
Ifemelu is portrayed as being spurned because of her non-American accent, which showed her as having an
inadequate identity that could not fit neatly into the norms of the American culture. This is apparent in the
following passage where Cristina speaks to Ifemelu in very slow motion because she has preconceived
notion that being Nigerian, Ifemelu could not speak and understand proper English:
“ You. Will. First. To. Get. A. Letter. From. The. International.
Students. Office”
I bet you do, ‘ Cristina Tomas said. I just don‘t know how well.
Ifemelu comes back with the letter, and Cristina says, “ I. Need. You. To. Fill. Out. A.
Couple. Of. Forms. Do. You. Understand. How. To. Fill. These. Out?” (Adichie, 2014, p.
133). Ifemelu realizes that Ms. Tomas is actually speaking in that way because of her “ foreign
accent and she felt for a moment like a small child, lazy-limbed and drooling” (Adichie,
2014, p. 101).
She had spoken English all her life, so she should not have acted coward and shrunk, but Cristina
made her feel that way even though she had mastered the other language, hence possessing “ the world
expressed and implied by that language” (Fanon, 1986, p. 18). This showed Adichie attempts at
comparing Nigeria that is the Othere to America, the Centre. Thus, as the Other, Ifemelu must do away
with her native and fluent English for a superior model from the Centre, based on having an accent. Thus,
as the Other, Ifemelu must do away with her native and fluent English for a superior model from the Centre,
just because she had an accent. Thus Cristina Tomas, as a representative of imperialist politics seeks to
intimidate Ifemelu into submission, as noted in her comments, “ I bet you do, but I don‘t know how
well” (Adichie, 2013, p. 101). Fanon argues that when black people use the colonizer‘s language; it is
regarded as “ predatory, and not transformative, which in turn may create insecurity on the black's
consciousness” (1986, p. 11). Due to invisible and inevitable pressure to get acceptance in the host society,
Ifemelu “in the following weeks, as autumn’s coolness descended, began to practice an American
accent”, (Adichie, 2014, p. 101). The adaptation to American English can be considered Ifemulu’s Fanonian
mask of conformity, mimicry.
In Americanah, not only accent is a part of identity but it is also a word choice. Ifemelu, in America
acquires the understanding that she needs to add some modification to her vocabulary to communicate
effectively. She learns that “ fat” is used in a negative meaning in America while in Nigeria it is used in a
positive sense. “Thin” instead has a positive connotation in America but certainly not used as an admiring
comment in Nigeria (Adichie, 2013, p. 93). “Boning” in America, means to have sex while in Nigeria, it
means to snub or to carrying face (Adichie, 2013, p. 93). Just as “ at home when somebody tells you
that you lost weight, it means something bad but [in America,]… you say thank you” (Adichie,
2013, p. 93). Thus, the word “ halfcaste” is considered an offense in America, while it is simply a way of
describing someone in Nigeria. Ifemelu learns to avoid the word “ half-caste” and use “ biracial” instead.
The illustrations clearly confirm Ifemelu’s mimicry not only in her accent, but also in word choices to get
accepted in the community she lives in.
For further acceptance, Ifemelu had to allow the erasure of her native culture for producing
“reformed, noticeable Other” (Castle, 2007, p. 139). Her friendship with wealthy American, Cart, is her
first act of mimicry. With Curt, she becomes a woman “ free of knots and care”, a woman “ running in
the rain with the taste of the sun-warmed strawberries in her mouth” (Adichie, 2013, p. 146). A
drink becomes “ part of the architecture of her life” (Adichie, 2013, p. 146), she starts going for hiking
with him. All these things she would never had imagined herself doing before, however, now she is doing
them in order to be more Americanized.
Curt represents the glamour of Americanization. Under colonialism and with regards to
immigration and displacement, mimicry is viewed as an unsuitable pattern of behavior. Every person
imitates the person in authority because he/she hopes to have access to that same power himself/herself.
Ifemelu “ laughed more because he [Cart] laughed so much” (Adichie, 2013, p. 146). In the process of
copying the master, she had to intentionally overpower her own cultural identity. “ She imagined him as
a child surrounded by too many brightly coloured toys” (Adichie, 2013, p. 146), she feels the same
with him.
The privilege and wealth available to the white upper class tempts Ifemelu as she becomes a woman
“ free from knots and care” (2013, p. 146) because of her relationship with Curt whose success was
largely a result of the access granted by his class and the colour of his skin. Ifemelu, as his girlfriend learns
more about the pressure of the white society. Ifemelu gets everything easy because of her mimic connection
with Cart. This is to show that the more these characters adapt to American society, the more life is made
manageable. She is comfortable enough to accept Curt‘s aid, and the implication of her taking advantage
of his privilege, he “ could with a few phone calls, rearrange the world, have things slide into the
spaces that he wanted them to” (Adichie, 2013, p. 150).
According to Aunty Uju mimicry is very much desirable because “ you are in a country that is
not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed” (Adichie, 2013, p. 90). Success
and acceptance are normally not that easy in a host country. One has to pay a heavy price to get integrated
into the host society. After spending some time living in America, Ifemelu learns that braided hair is
considered “unprofessional”. Following the advice from her friend, Ruth, before attending a job interview
in Baltimore, Ifemelu agrees to open her braids in order to attend a job interview. The justification used is
simply that because she was not in the country that is her own, you do “ what you have to do if you
want to succeed” even if this includes stripping of your natural beauty (Adichie, 2014, p. 90). The standard
of beauty in America and Nigeria are different and she has to mimic it in order to blend in.
After straightening their hair to gain employment, Americanah portrays that the hair straightening
process by Ifemelu and Aunty Uju is both destructive and oppressive. Ifemelu feels the oppressive weight
of changing her appearance to achieve an American ideal. The hairdresser rinsed out the relaxer, Ifemelu’s
head bent downwards against a plastic sink, “ needles of stinging pain shot up from different parts
of her scalp, down to different parts of her body, back up to her head” (Adichie, 2013, p. 150) as
she was imitating something against her nature. Her scalp was burning due to unnatural twist of her hair.
All this she was doing to be more Americanized, make her Otherness acceptable, and to get the job. At the
end the hairdresser says “ Wow, girl, you‘ve got the white girl swing!” (Adichie, 2013, p. 150). This
white girl swing was achieved by making her hair down rather than “ standing up” (Adichie, 2013, p. 150)
which was the natural one. Now, her hair “was straight and sleek, parted at the side and curving to
a bulb at her chin. The verve was gone” (Adichie, 2013, p. 151). She got so much changed that she
herself failed to recognize herself. Even Curt looked uncertain when he saw her. He told her that her hair
was more gorgeous braided “ so full and cool” (Adichie, 2014, p. 151). Bhabha calls this sort of mimicry
a “ sly civility” which he considers as “a sense of mockery to mimicry that is based on ambivalence”.
Though Ifemelu was not much comfortable with her new look because she loves her “natural kinky
hair”, however, the host society imposes that her “natural hair is ugly”. So willy-nilly, she has to lose her
old self to take in a different identity by straightening her kinky hair to look more American. Falakdin and
Zarrinjooee argues, “ Mimicry in colonial and postcolonial literature is most usually seen when the
colonized people imitate the language, dress, politics, or cultural posture of their colonizers” (2014,
p. 525). Later after she “breezed through the job interview and the woman shook her hand and said she
would be a wonderful fit in the company”. She learns an idea from this experience that adapting to the
standards of Whites is the only option to be successful and to be included in their society.
Adichie in Americanah (2013) goes a step forward by mimicking the American fashion sense, the
boundaries of American hospitality, and their nature of excessively tipping waitresses. In the novel for
instance, Ifemelu in her blog wrote:
When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only
disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. “
we are too superior/ busy/ cool/ not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people,
and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall. (Adichie, 2013, p. 97)
The American/ European society is ridiculed as a nation that claims to be self-fulfilled, but have no
regard for fashion. Their aural of superiority they believe assuages them from something as irrelevant as
looking good. Thus, it is not surprising when the Nigerian diasporan character Ginika went to shop for a
dress she would wear to a party opted for a shapeless one she calls postmodern; the dress looked to Ifemelu
like “ a boxy sack on which a bored person had haphazardly stuck sequins” (Adichie, 2013, p. 95).
On her return to Nigeria, Ifemelu is invited to the “Nigerpolitan club meeting” by her fellow
Americanah in Zoe Magazine, Doris, who parodies the way Nigerians say, “I will take wine, using ‘take’
instead of ‘drink’”. Adichie satirizes the “Nigerpolitan Club”, which is made up of mostly people with their
air of away (Adichie, 2014, p. 55). They discuss how difficult it is to find a decent smoothie in Lagos, how
one cannot find a decent vegetarian restaurant, how there is poor customer service everywhere in Nigeria,
how Hollywood is better than Nollywood and most interestingly foreign accents were used. Ifemelu makes
mockery of American returnees in Nigeria in the first article in her Nigerian blog which she calls “The
Small Redemptions of Lagos” which focuses on Nigerpolitan:
Lagos has never been, will never be, and has never aspired to be like New York, or
anywhere else for that matter. Lagos has always been undisputedly itself, but would not
know this at the meeting of the Nigerpolitan Club, a group of young returnees who gather
every week to moan about the ways that Lagos is not like New York as though Lagos
had ever been close to being like New York. …If your cook cannot make the perfect
Panini, it is not because he is stupid. It is because Nigeria is not a nation of sandwich-
eating people and his last oga did not eat bread in the afternoon. So he needs training and
practice. And Nigeria is not a nation of people with food allergies, not a nation of picky
eaters for whom food is about distinctions and separations. It is a nation of people who
eat beef and chicken and cow skin and intestines and dried fish in a single bowl of soup,
and it is called assorted, and so get over yourselves and realize that the way of life here
is just that, assorted. (Adichie, 2014, pp. 302-3)
Although the article is composed rather sarcastically, what the text does is to use mimicry to
underline the gap between the norm of courtesy presented by American/European enlightenment and its
colonial imitation in distorted form to indicate how different the Nigerian nation is from developed nations
of the world. And, how returning migrants must learn to admit and embrace this difference and readjust in
order to be accepted in the homeland, and to make their selves feel at home.
4. 3. 2. Hybridity
Adichie, through the diasporic journey of Ifemelu, has portrayed a successful story of hybrid
identity. At the beginning, in America, Ifemelu is treated differently for her cultural background. She is
portrayed as being spurned for the reason of her non- American accent with Crestina that showed her as
having an inadequate identity that could not fit neatly into the standardized trends of the American culture.
That is why she must negotiate between adaptation and resistance to American norms.
In the beginning, she chooses to adopt to American lifestyle for getting acceptance. She started
maturing her accent according to the whiter standard and rejected her own natural accent. The adoption of
American accent is an example of her linguistic hybridity. When Ifemelu’s friend Ginika was about to leave
for America, her schoolmates teased her that she would come back speaking like an American. For example,
she would start adding a “ slurred r to every English word she spoke” (Adichie, 2013, p. 51). Aunty
Uju is another example. When she speaks around whites, she speaks with an American accent. At one
occasion, she mispronounced her own name just to impress her white American friend. Sometimes, while
having conversation, it would occur to Ifemelu that Aunty Uju “ had deliberately left behind something
of herself, something essential, in a distant and forgotten place” (Adichie, 2013, p. 90). Also with
Bartholomew, Aunty Uju‘s boyfriend in the novel is illustrated using American accent even though his is
“ an American accent filled with holes, words mangled until they are impossible to understand”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 87). All these are done in order to get noticed or rather get accepted fully into the white
society, they had to discard some aspect of their original identity and acclimatize to the white ways of doing
and speaking things.
Ifemelu, long after her adaptation, starts feeling ashamed for having rejected her Nigerian English
and finally decides to stop faking her American accent and starts to use her African accent because she
thinks that practicing American accent is so tiring:
 Ifemelu decided to stop faking an American accent on a sunlit day in July, the same day
she met Blaine. It was convincing, the accent. She had perfected, from careful watching of
friends and newscasters, the blurring of the t, the creamy roll of r, the sentence starting with
“so”, and sliding response of “oh really”, but the accent creaked with consciousness, it was
an act of will. It took an effort, the twisting of lips, the curling of tongue. If she were
in a panic, or terrified, or jerked awake during a fire, she would not remember how to
produce these sounds. (Adichie, 2013, p. 130)
Ifemelu shows linguistic hybridity as her American English is not perfect and there is a blend of
western and eastern languages. On her going back to Nigeria, Ifemelu has a developed American accent.
The very developed accent becomes a hectic for her in her native country. She feels being caught between
not “being American in America and not being Nigerian in Nigeria, it makes her become a linguistic
hybrid”.
Another level of Ifemelu‘s hybridization is her assimilation into the white society. At the beginning
“ the world was wrapped in gauze; she could see the shapes of things but not clearly enough,
never enough” (Adichie, 2013, p. 99), it makes her little bit worried. Her Nigerian identity problematizes
her living in America. For the first time in her life, she is made to realize that she is black. So ironically
speaking, she becomes black in America. However, she keeps broadening her discovering and
understanding of America.
She hungered to understand everything about America, to wear a new, knowing skin right
away: to support a team at the Super Bowl, understand what a Twinkle was and what
sports lockouts meant, measure in ounces and square feet, order a muffin without thinking
that it really was a cake, and say I scored a deal without feeling silly. (Adichie, 2013, p.102)
In her quest to understand and learn the new American culture, she has moments when she would
interpret what is being said differently from what it is actually meant in America. For example, when
Americans said “ we’re getting a bite to eat, come with us!” they mean let us all go but everyone will
be responsible to pay for their own meal, which is not the practice back in Nigeria because it sounded like
an invitation for which somebody else is going to pay (Adichie, 2013, p. 97). In Americanah, Ifemelu
materializes her personality in the culture of host country in various ways. She does not show any concern
to read English books in order to master her language skilly for wining a “game of scrabble”. “And by
the way, I still win when we play Scrabble, Mr. Read Proper Books” (Adichie, 2013, p. 53). However,
she learns and adopts American culture with great speed.
New words were falling out of her mouth. Columns of mist were dispersing. Back home,
she would wash her underwear every night and hang it in a discreet corner of bathroom.
Now that she piled them up in a basket and threw them into the washing machine on
Friday evenings, she had come to see this, the heaping of dirty underwear, as normal.
She spoke up in class, buoyed by the books she read, thrilled that she could disagree
with professor and get in return, not a scolding about being disrespectful but an encouraging
nod. (Adichie, 2013, p. 103)
Ifemelu desires to learn and adopt about the American culture and their ways of life to fully
assimilate into her new environment. To this effect, being familiar with some American terms and being
able to use them without feeling silly will go for longer time in making her have sense of belonging in her
new home. By trying to acclimatize into her new home, Ifemelu is not trying to forget or abandon her own
ancestral culture, however, for being in America, demands her to find out homeland ways and to adopt them
in order to easily blend in host culture. Stuart (1991) sees the constant need by diasporans to achieve
communicative competence and properly fit into their new environment as a process of identity formation.
He asserts that:
Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking
of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent,
we should think, instead, of identity as a production which is never complete, always in
progress, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.
In order to be accepted in America, Ifemelu needs to understand and adopt differences of the host
culture. The same as Bhabha says that the “blending of culture and identity within condition of
colonial antagonism and inequity which is produced by the pressure between the colonizer and
the colonized” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 34). For instance, in Nigeria her “braided hair is looked at as a sign of
her identity and beauty” while in America “if you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 90) that is why one should not wear braids to interviews in America. In the central point
of the plot, she goes to flatten her natural curly hair just to look the same as Americans. And also in order
to get a good job, Ifemelu had to lose her old self to imbibe a different identity by straightening her kinky
hair to look more American before going for the job interview. The loss of her Nigerian identity is made
more obvious by the hair dresser who after relaxing Ifemelu‘s hair exclaims “wow girl you‘ve got the
white-girl swing” (Adichie, 2013, p. 151). The idea of combining African-type hair to make it look like
European style hair is like trying to change a person’s racial background is impossible, so , in the end, she
decides to grow back her “thick, kinky, God-given halo of hair, the Afro”( Adichie, 2013, p. 151) and
is happy with that. It is a proof that she is accepting herself as a hybrid in America.
On returning to Nigeria, she joins a group who called themselves the Nigerpolitans, who are
returnees from America with whom she shares the same experiences and they can “ list the things they
missed about America” (Adichie, 2013, p. 292). Ifemelu misses “ fresh green salads and steamed still-
firm vegetables” (Adichie, 2013, p. 293) that she is used to eat in America, but she also “ loved eating
all the things she had missed while away, joll of rice cooked with a lot of oil, fried plantains,
boiled yams” (Adichie, 2013, p. 293). This shows her inbetween situation that she is in and that she is not
both African and Nigerian. She is caught between not being “ American in America and not being
Nigerian in Nigeria”. In America, she is viewed as an outsider, not according to the whiter version while
in Nigeria she is labeled Americanah. She cannot be put into a single category. She uses her blogs to cope
and understand the differences between America and Nigeria. There is a cultural gap that she understands
and sees in both cultures. She does not want to be put into a specific category and does well by combining
the two to form her own identity.
Hybridity does not imply a harmonious fusion between people who are different, but it makes them
aware of the complexities that can be encountered when living with such difference as in the case of Ifemelu
in Adichie‘s Americanah. Ifemelu‘s position as a hybridised person separates her from both cultures. This
is due to the fact that she is not fully American and she after having distanced herself from Nigeria for years
does not feel fully Nigerian either. There are instances when Ifemelu talks about the differences in identity
of blacks and of Africans in America. It is interesting that she points out these differences throughout and
falls into both categories, and ultimately returns to Nigeria. We can see that she was African American in
the United States, but is American African back in Nigeria. It provides an interesting contrast to have
Ifemelu bring her Nigerian heritage to America, then bringing the American culture back to Nigeria. There
is a bridge in the gap of the two cultures in Ifemelu’s life, and she is that bridge.
4. 4. Diasporic Resistance
4. 4. 1. Ambivalence
 Immigrants imitate host society with a hope of gaining acceptance; however, in most of the cases,
they do not get their desired acceptance. As a result, they felt a sense of guilt as they had ignored their own
culture by imitating Whites and an accompaniment of a sense of irritation by not getting the acceptance.
These two feelings led them to be ambivalent; they developed feelings of liking and disliking at the same
time for their masters. Bhabha also reveals that the “colonial presence is always ambivalent, torn between
presenting himself as an original and authoritative with its articulation that shows repetition and difference”.
In other words, it is not a stable colonial identity, full of doubt, and always split between… Ambivalence,
one of his ideas, is to describe a “constant fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its
opposite too. It refers to a simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or
action” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 80), this notion is the effects of mimicry and hybridity.
In Americanah, Ifemelu’s action of mimicry and hybridity resulted in an ambivalent feeling within
her. She wants to be accepted in her new community, she imitates the host culture, however, at the same
time she also knows the hiden desire to resisting the American culture and to keep her native Nigerian
culture. When she learns against her indeginous exprenience and understanding that Americans give tip to
the waiters in America, she feels it totaly unethical and“ bribing, a forced and efficient bribing system”,
(Adichie, 2013, p. 97) for her. In this way she keeps on moving in-between the boundaries of two cultures.
Due to the ambivalence that comes with inhabiting the third space, she has a thorough insight into both
respective groups and their relations to the culturally dominant one. Her sense of belonging and
unbelonging both towards homeland and host land, makes her alien in both cultures.
Non-white people get generally extremely delighted when their assimelation is accepted and
praised by the natives. Ifemelu also becomes very happy when a person told her that she “sounds like an
American”. “Sounding American” is the result of her mimicry and hybridity, however, after thanking the
man, she felt confused. A tug of war is happening in her mind i.e between resisting and accepting American
culture. She wins eventually, however, “she begun to feel the stain of a burgeoning shame spreading
all over her”, for thanking him, for crafting his words “ You sound American” into a garland that
she hung around her own neck. Why was it a “compliment, an accomplishment, to sound American?”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 131).
Residing in the US for a long time led her to have smooth feelings toward the United States. She
commenced feeling the USA is her 2nd-home. Even though she loves The US and desires to have her place
inside the US, she admitted that she did not certainly just like the American tradition. From time to time,
she connects with communities of African americans, other instances she distanced herself from them. She
considered the yank subculture as right in some respects, however, lacking in others in comparison to her
indigenous tradition. Since Ifemelu is a hybrid, this feeling led to ambivalence that can be seen in the
quotation below:
They were talking about American politics once when she said, “ I like America. It is really
the only place else where I could live apart from here. But one day a bunch of Blaine’s
friends and I were talking about kids and I realized that if I ever have children, I don’t
want them to have American childhoods. I don’t want them to say ‘Hi’ to adults, I want
them to say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good afternoon”. (Adichie, 2013, p. 330)
Though, Ifemelu mimics the Western culture, she has ambivalent attitudes towards it. Ambivalence
commonly refers to a condition of being in among and within the postcolonial context; it's far seen because
the function quandary of the colonized problem’s double attitude of both appeal and repulsion in the
direction of the colonizers. Ashcroft argues that “ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance
exist in a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject” (2006, p. 10). It portrays the way colonized
humans are feeling conflicted between accepting or rejecting a way of life, it is able to manifest whilst each
cultures have the same impact toward the human beings. basically, Adichie describes Ifemelu’s feeling of
wanting to fully feel being American, however on the same she desires to be black as properly. since she
cannot completely feel each on the equal time, she feels as an alternative no longer whole. She feels break
up from herself, which ended in the double cognizance feeling. The self must split because it is not taken
into consideration right enough through the white society. It then has to provide every other self, a meant
better model, a whiter model.
Ifemelu’s movement of mimicry and hybridity ended in ambivalent feeling interior her. She desires
to be prevalent in her new community, she imitates the masters (colonizers) however she additionally feels
the urge to resist it and maintain her indigenous subculture. Shojaan (2013, p. 16) argues that ambivalence
is “adapted into colonial discourse theory” from psychoanalysis theory by Bhabha which describes “the
complex mix of attraction and repulsion” that portrays the connection between colonizers and colonized.
When Ifemelu learns that American people tip their waiters, she felt that it is not right; it seems like “
bribing, a forced and efficient bribing system”, (Adichie, 2013, p. 97) for her. due to the fact Ifemelu
inside the white subculture identifies with an immigrant identification, she movements in-between the
boundaries of history and white tradition without aligning herself with any of them. due to the ambivalence
that incorporates inhabiting the “third space”, she has a thorough insight into both of the groups and their
relation to the culturally dominant one.
Returning to her place of origin, Nigeria, Ifemelu, due to her time in America, is seen by her native
fellows as ‘Americanah’. This makes Bhabha’s view that “social and individual understanding of identity
is constructed in a perpetual process of mirroring relevant, continually asking for some form of translation
or mimicry”. All over the novel, Ifemelu got marginalized and generalized for the way she looked and
spoke. Even though she seemed adjusting to the host culture of America at the begining by “relaxing her
hair and attaining an American accent”, in this manner mimicking those norms, towards she realized, and
decided finally to go against them. In this way, ambivalence plays significant role in shaping Ifemelu’s life
and enables her to return to her homeland, Nigeria.
 4. 5. Diasporic Conflicts and Problematics
4. 5. 1. Sense of Displacement
Displacement is an essential part of human experience as men keep on moving from place to place
since time unknown for different reasons. Displacement on one hand enrich human experiences and help
to improve human condition but on other hand, it disturbs identity and creates unfavorable environment for
immigrants. This migration, in today’s world, is made further speedy by “globalization and capitalism”.
Individuals and communities move from one corner of the world to the other freely and eagerly due to
technology. Though human movements play effective role in connecting and bringing people closer,
however, they also problematize cultural identity of displaced people due to unfavorable condition in the
host country. Once the migrants are displaced from their native homes, the changes in their identity start
operating; they struggle for constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing their genuine identities. In
addition, to the identity issues, displacement also causes cultural shocks, alienation, unhomeliness, in-
betweeness, and otherness and so on.
In Americanah (2013), most of the characters do not feel fulfilled in their homelands, longing and
struggling to create their homes in a magical land, away from their homelands, where dreams happen. The
reason of their migration to America is not starvation and war but they dream of more and they have notion
of America where they can feel fulfilled. As Clifford says that “diaspora can no longer be looked at in
terms of the movement from homelands by a homogenous group of people, but also encompasses
individuals moving for a myriad of reasons that have come to characterize migration” (1994, p.
303). Most of them living well, they are not “the kind of poverty that crushed human souls” ( Adichie,
2013, p. 216). Among all the characters in the novel, Aunt Uju left her homeland earliest and went to
America. Being a mistress of a rich and influential general, she lives very well in Nigeria with a one-year-
old son, Dike. However, after the accidental death of the General, she is threatened by the General’s
relatives and therefore, she “ leaves immediately” for America and “ takes everything” with her ( Adichie,
2013, p. 142). Her departure is not a voluntary displacement. Economic condition and social pressure
forced her to leave Nigeria for America as apparent in the following paragraph:
We live in an ass-licking economy. The biggest problem in this country is not corruption.
The problem is that there are many qualified people who are not where they are supposed
to be because they would not lick anybody’s ass, or they do not know which ass to lick
or they do not even know how to lick an ass. ( Adichie, 2013, p. 77)
Ifemelu is another character who gets displaced. She has some fantastic notions about “overseas”
and thinks of it as a “ cold place of wool coats and snow” (Adichie, 2013, p. 103). Her fantasies about
overseas are so strong that they “ could not be fended off by reason” (Adichie, 2013, p. 103). The being
an oversea person, America is there in her dreams and she has a strong urge to fly there. On receiving a
scholarship, she moves to America in order to materialize her dreams and “ prosper in America” (Adichie,
2013, p. 77). During the time of her departure, in Nigeria:
Strikes were now common. In the newspapers, university lecturers listed their complaints,
the agreements that were trampled in the dust by government men whose children were
schooling abroad. Campuses were emptied, classrooms drained of life. Students hoped for
short strikes, because they could not hope to have no strike at all. Everyone was talking
about leaving. (Adichie, 2013, p. 98)
Uncertain social and economic condition pushes Ifemelu to America. On one occasion, she is not
even sure of getting her degree in her hometown. She says to her friend that, “ even if I start from
beginning in America, at least I know when I will graduate” (Adichie, 2013, p. 98). It was summer
when Ifemelu landed on dreamy land of America. “An enveloping, uncompassionate heat” (Adichie, 2013,
p. 104), of America is the first sign of Ifemelu’s displacement. She, at first night in America, “could not
sleep, her mind too alert to the newness of things” (Adichie, 2013, p. 106). Out of dislocation, there was
a “ stripped-down quality to her life, a kindling starkness, without parents and friends and home,
the familiar landmarks that made her who was she” (Adichie, p. 111). She feels unsettled on a new
land and sounds like another character who talks to her that “ this is my tenth year here and I feel
I’m still settling in” (Adichie, 2013, p. 112). The newness and dominant narrative of identity of the host
land does not let Ifemelu to feel at home in the host country. As the new and alien culture, social, economic,
political, psychological and environmental situations are unwelcomed; she feels depressed and even stops
communicating with Obinze:
She was swallowed, lost in a viscous haze, shrouded in a soup of nothingness. Between
her and what she could feel there was a gap. She cared about nothing. She wanted to
care, but she no longer knew how; it has slipped from her memory, the ability to care.
Sometimes she woke up flailing and helpless, and she saw, in front of her and behind
her, an utter hopelessness… she lay in bed and read books and thought of nothing… her
days were stilled by silence and snow. (Adichie, 2013, p. 156)
Ifemelu finds herself in a web of depression few months after her arrival in America. Faced with
the huddles of trying to get a good job and schooling, she experienced firsthand what it meant to be a
penniless black person in America. After Ifemelu‘s escapade with a tennis coach in Ardmore who had paid
her $100 for a sexual experience, she is left psychologically wounded from the experience as she was
pushed to exchange her body for money, something she would never had thought of if she was back home
in Nigeria. She went through very painful phases in order to be accepted in the host country.
Some years after Ifemelu’s movement toward US, Obinze “ moved to England” ( Adichie, 2013,
p. 174) in finding his way to America. Both Obinze’s and Ifemelu’s displacements are voluntary. They are
to a certain extent “ well-fed and watered” in Nigeria, “ none of them starving, or raped, or from
burned villages” but “ merely hungry for choice and certainty” and the longing for more brings them to
America (Adichie, 2013, p. 216). They struggle to get odd jobs, which are not always readily available to
them.
Obinze approached his first job of cleaning toilets, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a
pail. The toilets were not bad, some urine outside the urinal, some unfinished flushing;
cleaning them was much easier. He was shocked, one evening to walk into a stall and
discover a mound of shit on the toilet lid, solid, tapering, centered as though it has been
carefully arranged and the exact spot has been measured. Obinze stared at the mound of
shit for a long time, feeling smaller and smaller as he did so, until it became a personal
affront, a punch on his jaw. (Adichie, 2013, pp. 236-237)
The degrading situation of the Nigerian migrant is illustrated in the above excerpt when Obinze
who had left Nigeria with the hope of getting a good job and to eventually finish his postgraduate studies,
came face to face with the fact that the England he had been fantasizing about is different from the real
England. He half-heartedly does the cleaning job until he encounters an unsightly mess that brings back his
sense of self-worth and he leaves the job. The pursuit of a better education and ultimately a better life sees
Obinze and many other migrant Nigerians doing jobs they would be too ashamed to talk about to any
relative back home.
 Safran (1991, pp. 83-84) is of the opinion that diaspora people believe that they are not fully
accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it (quoted in Williams,
2011). This is the case of Obinze and Ifemelu who on coming frontal with the dystopian host countries, feel
alienated from them. Displacement problematizes cultural identity of both characters but more severely of
Ifemelu due to unfavorable condition in the host country. Once she is displaced from her native home, the
changes in her identity started operating; she struggled for constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing
her genuine identity. In addition to the identity issues, displacement also causes cultural shocks, alienation,
unhomeliness, in-betweeness, and otherness and so on.
4. 5. 2. Cultural and Racial Conflicts
Cultural and racial complications are the distinctive features of African diaspora. Due to them,
immigrants painfully encounter many problems on the host land. They hang between adopted land and
homeland, and carry on living with a sense of rootlessness throughout their whole life. The rootlessness
causes sociological and psychological problems for immigrants and they feel compelled to manage two
different cultures in order to feel rooted. Their whole lives deal out in the “adjustment of alien life and
culture with nostalgic feeling for motherland” (Reena, 2017, 608). Their painful diasporic experiences
shatter their dreams “of more” and disclose the futility of dazzling Western life.
In Americanah, all characters are impressed with the glamor of the American life and dream of
going to live in America. They are not dying of hunger and poverty in Nigeria; they only want to taste the
charm of America. Through these characters, Adichie has highlighted cultural differences between both
countries that are at times entertaining and dreadful. In Nigeria, mostly Lagos, Adichie stresses on the
socially accepted trend and culture of exploitation and greed, where most of the people become wealthy
through corruption and fraud, where bribery is very common among officials. Everyone bend before the
powerful and rich as mentioned clearly by Aunt Uju. Talking to Ifemelu about her master, the General, she
says, “ she was attracted to his power” (Adichie, 2013, p. 60). Furthermore, Western culture and
Whiteness are romanticized and an edge is given over Nigerian culture by sending children to Western
style schools where White principals are kept in order to attract the folks.
In America, Adichie focuses mostly on the racial hierarchy and prejudices Ifemelu discovers there,
but she also comments on the prevalence of depression and anxiety in American society. She especially
focuses on liberal white Americans, who like to criticize their own country but still imagine it as superior
to others, the one dispensing charity instead of needing it. Along with all these serious criticisms, the novel
also contains many light-hearted observations about the different cultures, like ways of speaking or
dressing. Ifemelu experiences this cultural difference firsthand when she offered an orange to Taylor, a boy
she babysits:
He put it in his mouth. His face crumbled. “It is bad! It is got stuff in it!” “ Those are the
seeds,” she said, looking at what he had spat in his hand… “ Oranges don’t have stuff in
them”… “ The orange is the right one for me, Morgan. I grew up eating oranges with
seeds…” (Adichie, 2013, p. 124)
This is one of the characteristics of postcolonial criticism; it examines the representation of other
cultures in literature and it effects on persons from both cultures and their personal reactions to it.
Besides cultural differences and conflicts, Americanah also examines blackness in America,
Nigeria and Britain. Racism is mostly portrayed in Ifemelu’s blog titled “ Raceteenth or Various
Observations About American Blacks (those formerly known as Negros) by a non-American Black”.
Ifemelu writes blogs, based on her daily observations and experiences, and as her social circle grows, so
does increases the entries of her blog. In the post entitled “To My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In
America You are Black Baby”, Ifemelu writes about race thus:
Dear Non-American Blacks, when you make the choice to come to America, you become
black, stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaica or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care… in
describing black women you admire, always use the word “ STRONG” because that is
what black women are supposed to be in America. If you are a woman, please do not
speak your mind as you are used to doing in your country. Because in America, strong-
minded black women are SCARY. And if you are a man, be hyper-mellow, never get
too excited, or somebody will worry that you’re about to pull a gun. (Adichie, 2013, p. 162)
Adichie explores race openly and effectively. In the above excerpt, she gives a detailed summary
of how the African diaspora person is approached and from what angle he /she is viewed in America. A
person’s country of origin is not considered as Adichie stresses above so long as the person’s skin colour
is black, the individual forever remain that different other separated from the mainstream American society.
This shows that the race subject in America has not changed much. It is still a major obstacle against
which many immigrants have continued to hit their foot against and, of course, constitutes one of the reasons
for the personal despair of African diasporas in different western countries.
Being sensitive to racism, Ifemelu does not understand clearly how and why the whites namely
Kimberly, Claire, and Curt, view African’s beauty through rose-tinted glasses. Her boyfriend, Curt takes
great care of her and worships her blackness. She feels herself comfortable and whole with him; however,
in social gatherings when she comes across white American females, she encounters racism about her
relationship with white Curt. Whenever, Curt introduced Ifemelu as his girlfriend in the circles of white
women, they looked at her in a surprise, “ a surprise that some of them shielded and some of them
did not and in their expression was the question “why her?” (Adichie, 2013, p. 214).
It is obvious that the reaction of these white women is pregnant with prejudice towards Ifemelu that
indicates their sense of superiority over black women. They think that being black; Ifemelu does not deserve
a white man as a boyfriend. Ifemelu feels, “their faces clouded with the look of people confronting
a great tribal loss” (Adichie, 2013, p. 214). Indeed, the “Other” is the subservient black immigrant who
is defined by the color of the skin, gender, class and place of origin. According to Hildago, the seemingly
innocent relationship of Ifemelu and Curt also exists a racist overview as “ black women are only with
white men because of their white privilege. On the other hand, white men are with black women
because they have this kind of attraction towards exotic cultures” (2015, p. 15). Further, she says that
they are, in consequence, exposed to the many stereotypes and biased ideas about interracial relationships:
“ When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter
when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside,
race matters” (Adichie, 2013, p. 212).
Likewise, at another occasion Ifemelu needs a carpet cleaner at her home, the person feels a bit
astonished, seeing a black woman has possession of a “ grand stone house with white pillars” (Adichie,
2013, p. 125):
She would never forget him, bits of dried skin stuck to his chapped, peeling lips, and she
would begin the post “ Sometimes in America, Race Is Class” with the story of his dramatic
change, and end with: It didn’t matter to him how much money I had. As far as he was
concerned I did not fit as the owner of that stately house because of the way I looked. In
America’s public discourse, “Blacks” as a whole are often lumped with “Poor Whites”.
 Not Poor Blacks and Poor Whites. But Blacks and Poor Whites. A curious thing indeed.
(Adichie, 2013, p. 125)
Ifemelu was not familiar with the concepts of identity that is based on skin and eye color, hairstyle,
body size, accent, fashion, food, and so on. At home, Ifemelu does not understand the identity that comes
with being black, because at home, every person is black while in public places, she faces a substantial hate
by other groups and vice versa because of her color and look. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks,
tells the truth that “ black people only become aware of their blackness in the environment of a white
society” (p. 89-90). Just the same way Aunty Uju narrates “ how she walked into an examining room
and a patient asked ‘Is the doctor coming’ and when she said she was the doctor the patient’s
face changed to fired clay” (Adichie, 2013, p. 182). This further describes the black-white confrontation
in considering the ‘black race’ as ugly, inferior, unintelligent and unqualified.
In Americanah, the issues of cultural and racial conflicts are well presented; Ifemelu, at the
beginning could not understand how she becomes black in America, however, with the passage of time, she
learns to understand how to deal with cultural and racial conflicts in the host country. She learns well how
to live with fragmented racial and cultural identity in America.
4. 5. 3. Alienation and Unhomeliness
Immigrants leave their homeland for West hoping to make a new home there, however, cultural
differences and racial discrimination in the West alienate them as ‘ other ’ instead of making them feel
homed. As a result, they start feeling a sense of unbelongingness. According to Safran, “ they are not
and perhaps cannot be fully accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and
insulated from it” (1991, pp. 83-84). Besides Safran, Bhabha states that colonial discourse “ construe the
colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin” (1983, p. 23). So colonial
discourse produces the colonized as a social reality that “ is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable
and visible” (Sohaila, 2015, p. 538). The colonizers consider them inferior in race, color, culture, and
knowledge. Bhabha (1983, p. 19) says that racial and sexual labels “ come to be seen as modes of
differentiation, realized as multiple, cross-cutting determinations, polymorphous and perverse, always
demanding a specific and strategic calculation of their effects”. Based on Bhabha’s (1983) theory of
otherness, according to Saba Noreen (2017), “colonial society is built in large part on the assertion
of the inferiority of colonized people”. They keep the colonized dependent and inferior so the
colonized feels “ a lack of acceptance and alienation while encountering dominant society”. As a result,
“ diaspora minority, as a branch of the colonized, is also considered as ‘other’ and inferior while
encountering the dominant majority and faces an everyday sense of alienation” in a host society
(Sohaila, 2015, p. 539).
In Americanah, racial and cultural discriminations is the major reason of characters’ alienation.
There are many cultural and racial discriminations in the novel. For example, when Ifemelu attempted to
find work in America, she is forced to straighten her curly hair to give the impression of a professional
person. In the salon, her “down hanging hair” that seems like the death of “something organic”, makes her
“mournful” and she felt s a deep “sense of loss” and alienation. The following passage reflects her sense of
loss and alienation when she talked to her friend after making her curly hair relaxed, according to the
demanded standards of looking professional in the host society:
“My full and cool hair would work if I were interviewing to be a backup singer in a jazz
band, but I need to look professional for this interview, and professional means straight is
best but if it’s going to be curly then it has to be the white kind of curly, loose curls
or, at worst, spiral curls but never kinky.”
 “It is so fucking wrong that you have to do this.” (Adichie, 2013, p. 151)
In another part of the story, Ifemelu walked in and smiled at the Asian woman behind the
counter.
“ Hi. I’d like to get my eyebrows waxed.”
“ We don’t do curly,” the woman said.
“ You don’t do curly?” “ No. Sorry.” (Adichie, 2013, p. 213)
The woman in the salon refuses to wax her eyebrows, as she is black and her blackness does not fit
well in Whites’ society. Though her eyebrows were waxed after her white boy-friend’s intervention,
however, the incident injected a sense of alienation and otherness in her. However, she pretended by hiding
her real feelings of being hurt from Curt by saying, “may be they’ve never done a black woman’s
eyebrows and so they think it’s different, because our hair is different, after all, but I guess now
she knows the eyebrows are not that different” (Adichie, 2013, p. 213). Similar to Ifemelu’s experience,
Aunt Uju also felt compelled to change her hairstyle and willy-nilly she relaxes her kinky hair to look
professional for a job interview. She says, “I have to take my braids out for my interviews and relax
my hair. Kemi told me that I should not wear braids to the interview. If you have braids, they
will think you are unprofessional” (Adichie, 2013, p. 90). Dike, Aunt Uju’s son, also faced discrimination
at school by his group leader, Haley. Once staying in a camp with his schoolfellows, Haley gave sunscreen
to everyone but she did not give Dike any. She said he did not need it. When he reached home, Ifemelu
looked at his face, which was almost expressionless. Feeling a sense of alienation and unbelonging in Dike,
Ifemelu tried to console him.
She thought that because you’re dark you don’t need sunscreen. But you do. Many people
don’t know that dark people also need sunscreen. I’ll get you some, don’t worry.” She
was speaking too fast, not sure that she was saying the right thing, or what the right
thing to say was, and worried because this had upset him enough that she had seen it on
his face. (Adichie, 2013, p. 137)
Almost all characters, disturbed and alienated by racial discriminations, are concerned with their
sense of belongingness. For illustration, the moment we come across Ifemelu, she is apprehensive with her
sense of belonging. Can she fit in in Princeton, where she earns a fellowship? She wants to belong there,
“ someone specially admitted into a hallowed American club, someone adorned with certainty”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 8), but to do so would be to “pretend to be someone else” (Adichie, 2013, p. 8). Does
she fit in at the African braiding salon, or has she become too Americanized? She knows that the braiders
will mock her for eating a granola bar, “as if the length of years in American explained Ifemelu’s
eating of a granola bar” (Adichie, 2013, p. 33).

Ifemelu did not continuously wrestle with her sense of belonging and unbelonging as compared to
the other characters who always struggle to fight their alienation in the host society. As a youngster, she is
well-known and that’s why in university, “she did not feel as though she did not belong because
there were so many options for belonging” (Adichie, 2013, p. 69). However, even then, the diasporic
experiences filled her with a deep sense of unbelonging and alienation, just like the other characters. In
order to feel belonged to the host society, she brushed aside her natural Nigerian accent. However,
speaking like Americans, is also a burden for her for “it took effort, the twisting of lip, the curling
of tongue” (Adichie, 2013, p. 130). In her attempts to “ belong” in America, it caused her physical and
emotional pain as well, just like the painful experience of relaxing her hair to get the accepted professional
appearance in the host society. In the same way, Obinze felt a sense of alienation in London. He felt small
and estranged due to his inability of using his own name to get a job in the host country, and he felt jealous
when he saw people working freely with their own identities. He loves reading American novels that is the
only relief in his alienation, allowing him to “ become Obinze again” (Adichie, 2013, p. 188).

Aunt Uju moved to countryside Massachusetts where she had to travel for thirty minutes to find a
matching lipstick for her black tinted skin. “This place is so white,” she said. “ Do you know I went
to the drugstore to quickly buy lipstick, because the mall is thirty minutes away, and all the
shades were too pale! But they can’t carry what they can’t sell”(Adichie, 2013, p. 129). Besides her
sound educational background and an experienced doctor, patients always take on her as a nurse and
sometimes just as a receptionist for the reason that she is black. Once “ she walked into an examining
room and a patient asked, Is the doctor coming, and when she said she was the doctor the patient’s
face changed to fired clay. The patient then called to transfer her file to another doctor’s office”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 136). The event makes her othered and alienated.
The theme of alienation, in the novel, can be understood through the discourse of racism and
cultural conflicts. All characters are treated differently in the host society due to their cultural and racial
background; as a result, they feel othered and alienated in the society.
Discrimination and racial issues alienate people in a host society, they start looking emotionally
toward homeland, however, being out of touch with it for a long time, they do not feel homed even there
and as a result, they start feeling unhomely. Home becomes an arena of struggle for them; they continuously
struggle to counter their sense of unhomeliness.
In Americanah, characters, because of their experiences, react differently to the issues of home
and unhomeliness. For instance, Ifemelu, at the start of the story, did not disclose any sense of belonging
for her homeland, Nigeria, rather she left it with an expectation to “ prosper in America” ( Adichie, 2013,
p. 76). However, after dislocation, the circumstances change and she, against her expectations, found totally
a different way of life in the host country. She is not only treated differently; in some cases even
discriminately against her expectation, in America. She out of nostalgia and discrimination decided to return
home to Nigeria, no one could understand the reason behind her unexpected return. Unlike Obinze, who
entered and lived in England illegally, Ifemelu, with a protected scholarship, has a legal permission to live
in America. In the course of her thirteen years stay in America, she successfully completed her studies,
undertook a fellowship in Princeton, earned money by working in different firms, and ran a race blog very
successfully. Ifemelu, based on her given profile, stood out among migrant women, who does not need the
least to return to her poorer homeland permanently. However, in the face of her accomplishments, she still
felt nostalgic and passionately wanted to return home:
It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and
borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints
of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.
She scoured Nigerian websites, Nigerian profiles on Facebook, Nigerian blogs, and each click
brought yet another story of a young person who had recently moved back home, clothed in
American or British degrees, to start an investment company, a music production business, a
fashion label, a magazine, a fast-food franchise. She looked at photographs of these men
and women and felt dull ache of loss, as though they had pressed open her hand and taken
something of hers. They were living her life…there was no cause; it was simply that layer
after layer of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her
(Adichie, 2013, p. 10).
 The concept of home and homeland change with a change in locality. Ifemelu’s distance and
absence from her home, transformed her perception of home. She idealized her life back in her homeland,
Nigeria, much like she idealized her life in the host land, America, to defend her rejection of what she
attained in America. Ifemelu‘s life is “ both cyclic and dualistic; she existed with her feet in two
countries separated not only by geography but also politics” (Nosalek, 2015, p.39). In terms of Bhabha
(1994), feeling of being caught between two cultures, makes Ifemelu’s identity unhomely. This globalized
perspective and ability to be nostalgic of her homeland as she sometimes is of America, is a function of her
experiential knowledge of both cultures. Thus, her decision to return home “is an entirely heroic one,
especially because everyone around her failed to see the rationality in her resolution to return to
Nigeria” (Bimbola, p. 10). No one was ready to believe in her decision:
Everyone she had told she was moving back seemed surprised, expecting an explanation,
and when she said she was doing it because she wanted to, puzzled lines would appear
on foreheads. You are closing your blog and selling your condo to go back to Lagos and
work for a magazine that doesn‘t pay well, Aunty Uju has said and then repeated herself,
as though to make Ifemelu see the gravity of her own foolishness. (Adichie, 2013, p. 15)
Home, for Ifemelu, becomes an arena of struggle. After spending fifteen years in America and
regarding it her home, unexpectedly, she starts feeling for her homeland, Nigeria. Though apparently she
is well settled in America, however, her decision of return reflects her feelings of unhomeliness in America.
No one takes her decision of going back to Nigeria, seriously. One day her aunt asked Ifemelu, “ Will you
be able to cope? In the same way, her parents believe she may not be able to cope in Nigeria
but are consoled by the fact that she can always return to America, since she is an American
citizen” (Adichie, 2013, p. 13). Regardless of the ground reality that her ancestral home is less beautiful
and unpromising than her diasporic home, Ifemelu choose to return to Nigeria. Safran supports Ifemelu‘s
journey home when he asserts that “ for diaspora people, their homeland is their ideal home where
they or their descendants should eventually return” (1991, p. 84). This indicates that people in diaspora
hang on emotionally to homeland. Ifemelu‘s development leads her go back to Nigeria after spending
thirteen years in America: “ Nigeria became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could
sink her roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil...” (Adichie,
2013, p. 10).
For Ifemelu, Nigeria is the only place, she feels she actually belongs to; a place she can deeply sink
her roots, her home. This is because Nigeria as her ancestral home is bereft of any racial biasness that
pervade the American society. However, when Ifemelu finally returned, she finds Lagos drastically
different, she “ stared out of the window, half-listening, thinking how unpretty Lagos was, roads
infested with potholes, houses springing up unplanned like weeds. Of her jumbled-up feelings, she
recognized only confusion” (Adichie, 2013, p. 278). She finds Lagos very different against her fantasies
and she feel unhomed in the very homeland:
Lagos assaulted her; the sun-dazed haste, the yellow buses full of squashed limbs, the
sweating hawkers racing after cars, the advertisements on hulking billboards… and the
heaps of rubbish that rose on the roadsides like taunt. Commerce thrummed too defiantly.
And the air was dense with exaggeration, conversations full of over-protestations. One
morning, a man‘s body lay on Awolowo Road. Another morning, The Island flooded and
cars became gasping boats. Here, she felt, anything could happen; a ripe tomato could burst
out of solid stone. Therefore, she had the dizzying sensation of falling, falling into the
 new person she had become, falling into the strange familiar. Had it always been like
this or had it changed so much in her absence? (Adichie, 2013, p. 277)
Besides the disordered condition of the countryside, several other sides of her native people’s
lifestyle such as their passions and fashions, habits, work ethics, moral codes etc, appeared very
unacquainted and foreign to Ifemelu and as a result, she finds herself unhomely. As Tyson says, “ to be
unhomed is to feel not at home even in your own home because you are not at home in yourself:
your cultural identity crisis has made you a psychological refugee” (2006, p. 421). Consequently,
unhomeliness makes “psychological refugees” blend their two cultures.
Further, on returning to Nigeria, she is seen by others as ‘Americanah’, which means neither
American nor Nigerian. It deepens her sense of unhomeliness. Unhomeliness, according to Tyson, “ is an
emotional state: unhomed people don’t feel at home even in their own homes because they don’t
feel at home in any culture and, therefore, don’t feel at home in themselves” (2011, p. 250). The
feelings of unhomeliness injected a sense of otherness in diasporic people. According to William Safran,
diaspora people “ believe that they are not and perhaps cannot be fully accepted by their host
society and therefore feel partly alienated {unhomeliness} and insulated from it” (1991, pp. 83-84)
which means that people in diaspora always live with a sense of alienation in a host society. As Huddart
has stated, Bhabha “ directs our attention to what happens on the borderlines of cultures, to see
what happens in-between cultures” (2006, p. 4). According to Farahbakhsh (2016), “Bhabha uses the
concept of uncanny… extends Freud’s sense of a foreignness or the uncanny and believes that we
are even foreign to us. There is a sense of foreignness within the self and therefore dividing
things into self and other is not plausible” (p. 107). Even though Ifemelu seems to adapt to white norms
at first by relaxing her hair and attaining an American accent, thereby mimicking those norms, she realized,
and decided eventually to go against them by returning to her homeland in order to feel homed. However,
the feelings of unhomeliness are so deep rooted in her that she does feel at home even in her own homeland.
4. 5. 4. Identity Crisis
On moving to a host country, immigrants struggle to cope with a newly discovered situation by
shaping and reshaping their identities accordingly. In Americanah, identity is one of the important themes.
Both main characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, go through very hard time and struggle with their identities in
the host lands. Outside cultural forces affect and challenge their identities. Though both Ifemelu and Obinze
belong to well-bred families and are well educated, however, in the host country their backgrounds are of
no use. They are compelled to hide their identities if they want any job in the host countries. In order, to
further camouflage themselves, they take on the accepted accent and life style of the host society. All these
intended and unintended actions deeply disturb their identities.
In the host society of America, Ifemelu must “ struggle with her identity as an American-
African” (Cosby, 2015). She goes through different phases in getting her American-African identity. In the
beginning, she resisted and was reluctant to adopt a new identity; as a result, she became victim to an
identity crisis. In order to cope with the situation, she first, surrenders to a newly found American identity
by straightening her hair and taking on an accepted American accent. She even opted to use a bogus identity
of another person to scour around for work, because being a student she is not allowed to work. She blended
both cultures to deal with her identity crisis, but then it meant that she “ inhabits a kind of in-between
place, where she is neither wholly American nor wholly Nigerian; she is an Americanah” (Cosby,
2015). Thus, her problematic identity corroborating Omolola Ladele’s position that “ if, previously,
questions of identities were more clearly understood and easily defined, every indication in the
current global space suggests deeply rooted contradictions, tensions, pluralisms and paradoxes in
any attempt at defining personal, group, ethnic or national identities” (2010, p. 460).
Like Ifemelu, Obinze’s identity, in Americanah, also tears apart in England. His experience of
adopting a new cultural identity in England is harder than that of Ifemelu’s in America. Despite his
excellent schooling and family background, he opted to work under the fictitious identity of “ Vincent”
(Adichie, 2013, p. 250) with a fake National Insurance Number, to get some job. Obinze brushed aside his
old identity and took up a new identity to enable him to find work. However, he was caught and sent back
to Nigeria. On getting back to Nigeria, he started mending his identity crisis by starting some business and
eventually became a big name in Nigeria. In America, Ifemelu needed to use the name of somebody else,
Ngozi Okonkwo, to get a job without legal permission. Significantly, Obinze and Ifemelu’s characters in
Americanah could not have been more distorted realizing that their university education could only attract
the job of a warehouse boy in London and a babysitter and relaxer to a tennis coach in America respectively.
Besides the odd jobs in America, Ifemelu also faced a new concept of “kinky” hair; she was not
familiar with before (Adichie, 2013, p. 13). Aunty Uju shared her experience with Ifemelu in that how she
sacrificed her natural hair to look professional:
“ I have to take my braids out for my interviews and relax my hair… If you have braids,
they will think you are unprofessional.”
“So there are no doctors with braided hair in America?” Ifemelu asked.
“I have told you what they told me. You are in a country that is not your own. You do
what you have to do if you want to succeed”. (Adichie, 2013, p. 90)
In Americanah, hair and braid are used metaphorically to discover the themes of transnational
engagement and identity. Most of African immigrant black women in America and Europe face identity
crises due to their physical appearance, especially of their kinky hair. Ifemelu was shocked to discover
through her Aunt Uju that in America kinky and braided hair are considered unprofessional. Uju advised
her to uncurl her hair to get a professional look. She very angrily reacts:
My full and cool hair would work if I were interviewing to be a backup singer in a jazz
band, but I need to look professional for this interview, and professional means straight is
best but if it’s going to be curly then it has to be the white kind of curly, loose curls
or, at worst, spiral curls but never kinky. It is so fucking wrong that you have to do this.
(Adichie, 2013, p. 151)
According to Joy (2016), “ there is disparity between African hair and Americans
misconception of it”. Whites do not welcome the natural texture of Black female hair. In her blog post,
Ifemelu writes, “ some black women, AB and NAB, would rather run naked in the street than
come out in public with their natural hair. Because, you see, it’s not professional, sophisticated,
whatever, it’s just not damn normal” (Adichie, 2013, p. 217). Presumably, black woman hair is
symbolically considered inferior in the West and must be “subdued” to be considered decent, proficient,
and well managed as was done by Ifemelu (Adichie, 2013, p. 83). At the beginning she resisted the idea of
giving up the natural style of her hair, however, later on, she realized the need to relax her natural kinky
hair for the interview and just with a little burn:
Her hair was hanging down rather than standing up, straight and sleek, parted at the side
and curving to a slight bob at her chin. The verve was gone. She did not recognize herself.
She left the salon almost mournfully; while the hairdresser had flat-ironed the ends, the
smell of burning, of something organic dying which should not have died, had made her
feel a sense of loss. (Adichie, 2013, p. 151)
 Addichie, through changes of Ifemelu’s hair, addresses the politics of hair through the views of
many female characters who want to keep their original hair, but feel compelled to change it because the
host society regards their hair as primitive and thus unprofessional.
There are several instances of altered identities in the novel. For instance, scolding Dike in a shop,
Aunt Uju, in order to impress the white girl at the counter, deliberately shifted from her normal nature and
puts on an American accent. She put much efforts to impress Whites with her newly acquired accent as “…
nasal, sliding accent she put on when she spoke to white Americans, in the presence of white
Americans, in the hearing of white Americans. Pooh-reet-back and with the accent emerged a new
persona, apologetic and self-debasing” (Adichie, 2013, p. 82). Likewise, Guinean, also sounds like Aunt
Uju, by saying, “ Oh Gad, Az someh,” instead of “ Oh God, I was so mad” (Adichie, 2013, p. 12).
Ifemelu’s classmate, Bisi, is another character who “had come back from a short trip to America with
odd affectations, pretending she no longer understood Yoruba, adding a slurred r to every English
word she spoke” (Adichie, 2013, p. 51). All these examples show “ America as a place that puts a lot
of pressure on immigrants to adopt an American identity” (McIlwain, 2010). In an attempt to integrate,
characters feel enforced to adapt; estranging themselves and their identities, and as a result get extremely
fragmented. Ifemelu discovered the true situation of immigrants’ identity crises on her arrival in the US as
“how the old Aunty Uju would never have worn her hair in such scruffy braids… or worn
trousers that gathered bulkily between her legs. America had subdued her” (Adichie, 2013, p. 110).
In Americanah, besides adaptation of American accent, characters must learn and need to be careful
about choice of words as a word choice is also part of identity and is thus very important. Realizing the
difference in connotative meanings of words in America, Ifemelu started learning to add some modification
to her vocabulary in order to be native like in her expressions. For example, the word “ fat” is a neutral
statement in Nigeria while in America it is used with a negative connotation (Chimamanda, 2013, p. 124).
“ Thin” on the other hand, has a positive connotation and people use it as a compliment in America, but in
Nigeria it has a negative connotation and people use it in a context of illness (Adichie, 2013, p. 124). “
Boning” in America means to have sex while in Nigeria, it means to snub or to carrying face (Adichie,
2013, p. 123). Just as “ at home [in Nigeria] when somebody tells you that you lost weight, it means
something bad but [in America,]… you say thank you” (Adichie, 2013, p. 124). Thus, the word “
halfcaste” is merely a description in Nigeria while it is an insult in America. Ifemelu started to learn to be
cautious in her word choice and avoid words with a negative connotation for instance, she uses “biracial”
instead of “half-caste” as the former word has a negative connotation in America. These examples show
the hardships of her identity crises and how she manages to cope with it by adapting t not only her accent,
but also learns the words she had better replace by other ones that are accepted in the host community.
Ifemelu, typical of most migrant populations that retain objective components of a coherent
ethnic identity, such as a shared history, language and culture, she maintains a powerful link (imaginary or
real) to the territorial homeland through upholding her connection with her homeland by returning to
Nigeria.
4. 6. Conclusion
Americanah, through the diasporic journey of Ifemelu, the main character, presents the difficulties
of living in a host country experiencing the senses of displacement, alienation, unhomeliness, and racial
and cultural shocks. These problems prompted her diasporic struggles and keep on problematizing and
challenging her identity. She leaves Nigeria for America with a dream ‘to prosper’ and make her home
there. However, she finds her land of dreams to be different and she faced many problems on the host land
in trying to get settled there. The host land injected a sense of displacement and unhomeliness in her. In
order to cope with the situation and to be“ a reformed, recognizable Other”, she started imitating western
culture through her appearances, manners and language. Further, to get the ‘desirable other’, she gave up
her Nigerian identity and started to learn to adapt to the dominant identity of the host society. However, she
does not get her desired acceptance by Whites and as a result, she starts feeling irritation by not getting
acceptance by them and an inner sense of guilt pricks her by ignoring her own Afro-culture. She feels
ambivalence as the result of her mimicry and feels mimicry as “a garland that she hung around her
own neck” (p. 131). She feels the urge to imitate western culture in order to occupy a place in western
society but at the same time, she also has the feeling to resist that urge. At the end, she blends both cultures
and becomes African American in the United States and American African back in Nigeria. It provides an
interesting contrast to have Ifemelu bring her Nigerian heritage to America, then bringing the American
culture back to Nigeria.