I dentity, Afropolitanism and the New African Diaspora: Adichie’S Americanah, Habilah’s travellers and Noo Saro Wiwa's looking for Transwonderland

Abstract

This study aims to examine the identity conflicts within the African diaspora and the growth of Afropolitanism through the medium of Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah and Helon Habila’s Travellers. In the last three decades, the growing intercontinental emigration of Africans has birthed a new African ethnoscape embodying a myriad of unique cultural identities which are continually transposed with western notions of self-definition to enable the African assimilation into western-dominated societies. Thus, this assimilation unwittingly plunges the African into what Atima Omara describes as a ‘triple consciousness’ because the African foreigner must juggle multiple identities. Inevitably, hierarchies exist within the Afro-diasporic community that venerate the Afropolitan while maligning the African migrant despite these western societies inextricably linking the Afro-diasporic experiences together as one shared migrant identity however nuanced. Consequently, this dissertation will first examine the several afro-diasporic identities and the concept of afropolitanism. The second chapter would examine the characters of Adichie’s Americanah and how the author parallels the Afropolitan. The third chapter will examine Habila’s Travellers as an exploration of afro-diasporic identities through the interconnected web of story-telling. Finally, the fourth chapter will examine Noo Saro Wiwa's novel as an Afropolitan's confrontation of her changing identities.