RACE, GENDER, MIGRATION, AND BELONGING IN CONTEMPORARY TRANSNATIONAL FICTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AMERICANAH, GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER, AND HOMEGOING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/7as2ya16Keywords:
Race, Gender, Migration, Identity, Belonging, Intersectionality, Diaspora, Cultural Hybridity, Black Atlantic, Transnational FictionAbstract
The present paper examines representation of race, gender, migration, identity, and belonging in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019), and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016). Using a qualitative comparative approach and close textual analysis, the study explores how socio-cultural hierarchies shape individual experiences across contemporary transnational contexts. Drawing on the concepts of cultural identity, hybridity, intersectionality, and the Black Atlantic, the paper analyses four interconnected themes: race and social exclusion, gender and intersectional marginalization, identity and cultural negotiation, and memory and migration. The study highlights that race, gender, and migration function as significant structures influencing belonging, opportunity, and selfhood, while historical memory continues to shape contemporary identities. The selected novels collectively reveal the complex relationship between personal experiences and broader social, cultural, and historical processes in contemporary transnational fiction.
References
1.Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
2.Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
3.Bouson, J. Brooks. "The Politics of Relation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah." College Literature, vol. 43, no. 2, 2016, pp. 315–340.
4.Crenshaw, Kimberlé. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–1299.
5.Davis, Rocío G. "Identity, Memory, and Belonging in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 54, no. 4, 2018, pp. 455–468.
6.Eckstein, Lars. "Reading Migration Narratives in a Transnational Age." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 51, no. 1, 2016, pp. 15–29.
7.Evaristo, Bernardine. Girl, Woman, Other. Hamish Hamilton, 2019.
8.Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard UP, 1993.
9.Gyasi, Yaa. Homegoing. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
10.Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, pp. 222–237.
11.hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. 2nd ed., South End Press, 2000.
12.Moslund, Sten Pultz. Migration Literature and Hybridity: The Different Speeds of Transcultural Change. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
13.Nwonka, Clive. "Race, Representation, and Contemporary Black British Identity in Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other." Wasafiri, vol. 36, no. 2, 2021, pp. 43–51.
14.Osei-Nyame, Kwadwo. "Memory, Slavery, and Diaspora in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing." Research in African Literatures, vol. 50, no. 4, 2019, pp. 87–103.
15.Quayson, Ato. Diaspora and Returns in Fiction. University of Toronto Press, 2013.
16.Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form. Oxford UP, 1999.
17.Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2nd ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
