Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part C (2024)

This paper exemplifies sophisticated play through intersectionality in identity formation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's “Americanah”. This is the hallmark of the main character, Ifemelu. She is very representative and finely represented about issues of race, gender, class, and nationality, looking into how these intersectionalities affect individual experience and perception. It is a lens into the journey of one Nigerian immigrant trying to make a living first in the United States, and later back in Nigeria. What Adichie was able to turn it into are the experiences related to cultural assimilation, struggle for self-definition, and confrontation with American and Nigerian social norms. The paper does so through a demonstration of how these variously intersected identities affect personal and social identity in Ifemelu. The paper further explains how Adichie's treatment of intersectionality is a critique of American and Nigerian societies simultaneously but also presses its readers into reconsidering their very concept of identity and belonging.