Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013): Living In-between Two Worlds

Résumé: This research is a post-colonial comparative study between Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013). The main purposes of this study is to demonstrate how dispersion from the place of birth to new lands, results in identity transformation through the process of assimilation, and to reveal the hardships of the immigrant experience, exposing the concerns of the Diasporic communities in the two novels. To achieve this purpose, we have made use on some post-colonial concepts that are Homi Bhabha’s hybridity and mimicry and Stuart Hall’s theoretical work Cultural Identity and Diaspora. At the beginning of our analysis, we have explored the two authors’ biographies in relation to their realistic immigrant experiences, and its influence on their writings. Moreover, we have drawn the similarity between the Asian immigrant experience in The Namesake and the African immigrant one in Americanah, comparing between the two novels’ immigrant characters. Then, through the inclusion of our selected postcolonial theoretical concepts, we have come to notice its relevance in the study of the immigrant writings, referring to the immigrants’ attempt to integrate through Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and Hall’s identity transformation on immigrant characters. In this way, at the end of our analysis of these two novels, we conclude that despite of belonging into two different immigrant generations, communities and cultures, Jhumpa Lahiri and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have a similar immigrant experience, and share the same convictions towards the sufferings of their indigenous immigrant communities.

Publié dans la revue: