RACIAL PREJUDICE, ENVIRONMENT AND LOSS OF PERSONHOOD IN ADICHIE’S IN AMERICANAH: A NATURALISTIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah is a mature tale and a prodigious breakthrough in African literature. Told with charm and a touch of rare ingenuity, Americanah touches the core of several aspects of our civilized world and recreates humanity from the perspectives of different races, cultures, and continents. The novel qualifies to be described as ‘Roman a Clef’- a novel with a key to unlocking life, variegated cultures, classes, and races among the myriads of ideological inclinations that are enduring constituents of the breath-taking narrative. Naturalism as a literary concept accounts for the influence of environment, hereditary, and other external influences on characters. With data from the novel as a primary source and naturalism as a theoretical anchor, the paper studies the naturalistic underpinnings in Adichie’s Americanah. The paper discovers that racism, high cost of living, acculturation, harsh weather conditions, and socio-economic dynamics, in several ways, exerts great influence on characters and impact negatively too on their overall psyche often time leading to loss of personhood. The study concludes that these new experiences rob characters of their dignity and humanity and surmises that migrants as fictionally recreated in Adichie’s narrative, should be fully aware of, and constantly in search of new ways to cope with of their new environment and its ennui and like Ifemelu, take the decision and the path that leads to lasting happiness and fulfillment whenever it appears the pathway to their sanity and reclamation of their identities.