The Dynamic Interplay of the Global and Local Environments: A Study of Chimamanda Adichies Americanah

Abstract

The current phenomenon of globalization enables the movement of people across borders including Africans as well. At no other time has there been such great numbers of African writers in the Western diaspora writing and publishing at the centre for a global audience. The environment, circumstances as well as several other situations in which the writers bring the local into the global space define the ‘new African diaspora’. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an acclaimed female African writer, who has taken advantage of her cosmopolitanism to present the reality of her race, ethnic group and her gender at the centre. Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah presents the challenges and impact of migration and globalization faced by the heroine, Ifemelu and that of several others in the new world. Adichie in the novel juxtaposes the local situations and global realities with each assuming different significations for her characters at profound levels. This exposition is hinged on post colonialism’s key terms such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘liminality’ as well as Taiye Selasi’s concept of ‘Afropolitan’. The instances of the interplay of global and local environments in Americanah are brought to the fore to advance the construction of new identities of the African migrants. The outcome is such that the global environment is seen to have enabled new identities of migrants now free of confining dictates of the local environment where cultural norms hold sway.