Introduction

The purpose of this dissertation is to comment up on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s famous novel

Americanah (2013). The analysis on the novel focuses on the diasporic study based on the character’s

experience in moving to the other land from their’s . I will explore how the author portray the traumas faced

by the characters on interweaving their memories in past and their present circumstances . Though the

diasporic studies always tries to portray the lonliness and isolation of the characters of the first generation it

should also speak about the same sufferings in account with the second generation too.

African literature can be defined as the literary works of African continent.It

contains both oral literature and written litreature.Oral literature includes stories, dramas, riddles, histories,

myths,songs and proverbs.they mainly use these oral literature to remind whole community of their

ancestor’s heroic deeds, their past and the precedents for their customs and traditions. Folktale tellers use

call response techniques. A griot will accompany a narrative with music. Slave narratives were the the

initial attention seekers in African writings . the best example of the latter is The Adventures Of Olaudah

Equiano or Gustavus Vaasa, the African (1789). It described vividly the horrors of slavery and the slave

trade. They used post colonial writings to write about the repression they faced from the colonisers.Thomas

Mofolo’s ‘Chaka’ about the famous Zulu military leader in Susuto. Since the early 19th century writers

from Western Africa have used newspaper to air their views. Several founded newspapers that served as

vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings. After World War II , as Africans began demanding their

independence, more African writers were published . Wole Soyinka, Chinu Achebe , Ousmane Sembene ,

Kofi Awooner , Ben Okri and Jacques Rabemanjara produced poetry, short stories , novels , essays and

plays. All were writing in European languages, and often they shared the same themes: the clash between

indigenous and colonial cultures, condemnation of European subjugation, pride in the African past, and hope

for the continent's independent future. For example, V. Y. Mudimbe in Before the Birth of the Moon (1989)

explores a doomed love affair played out within a society riddled by deceit and corruption. The Zimbabwean

novelist and poet Chenjerai Hove (1956–2015), wrote vividly in English and his native Shona of the

hardships experienced during the struggle against British colonial rule, and later of the hopes and

disappointments of life under the rule of Robert Mugabe.

In South Africa , the horrors of aparthied have, until the present, dominated the literature. Es’kia Mphahlele,

Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Dennis Brutus and Miriam Tlali all reflect in varying degrees in their

writings the experience of living in a racially segregated society. Much of contemporary African literature

reveals disillusionments and dissent with current events . In Kenya Ngugi wa Thiongo’s was jailed shortly

after he produced a play , in , kikuyu, which was perceived as highly critical of the country’s government.

The weaving of music into the Kenyan's play points out another characteristic of

African literature. Many writers incorporate other arts into their work and often weave oral conventions into

their writing. p'Bitek structured Song of Iowino (1966) as an Acholi poem; Achebe's characters pepper their

speech with proverbs in Things Fall Apart (1958). Others, such as Senegalese novelist Ousmane Sembene,

have moved into films to take their message to people who cannot read .

Nigerian literature is the literature of Nigeria , which is written by Nigerians and

addresses Nigerian problems. It is written in English , Igbo , Urhobo , Yoruba , Hausa and other languages

of the country. Nigerian literature in English has witnessed an impressive expansion in the more than five

decades of its existence. When considering the award of Nobel Prize for Literature to Wole Soyinka in

1986,one sees that it is evidence of the extent to which this genere of literature has become globally accepted

inspite of the fact that it is less than one century ago this genere of literature came to be .

The Nigerian writer, being a product of cultural hybrids, is first and foremost a

member of a community in which the oral tradition is away of life; however, his degree of integration of

traditional verbal sources depends on his nearness to such a source,his stylistic engagement, setting and

ideological pattern in his work. Since he belongs to Nigerian community his social life can be read from his

literary works. Western influences began affecting Nigerian literature as early as the eighth century AD

when Arabic ideas and culture were introduced to Africa. During the fourteenth century, written and spoken

Arabic flourished in northern Nigeria and by the seventeenth century, some Hausa literature had been

translated into Arabic. Christian missionaries accelerated the importation of western education into Nigeria

during the nineteenth century. Some native black Moslems met the threat of white Christians with protests in

poetry. Aliyu dan Sidi, for example, utilized the oral literature tradition to write poetic protests against the
missionaries. However, other Yoruba authors, such as D.O. Faguna and Isaac Delano, wrote novels

promoting the missionaries and teaching the Christian religion. Although Faguna and Delano offered

Christian religious instruction and preached acceptance of western ideas, both relied heavily upon their

ancestral folktales in creative writing. Faguna's pieces in particular "show and extensive use of proverbs,

riddles, traditional jokes and other lore central to Yoruba belief."

By 1930, novels began to develop in the country. Non realistic novels which include

mysterious characters were published.A major shift in literary style from fantasy to realism resulted from the

founding of the University College of Ibadan in 1948. The calls for a new literary style came from scholars

educated in the western tradition at the University " Yoruba writers of the time reacted appropriately,

eliminating the fairies in favor of human characters, omitting the animal-to-human conversation found in the

non-realistic literature. Leaving behind group-specific references and literature styles, the authors worked

with broader themes. "Thus a new literary tradition was being adopted by many Yoruba novelists; they dealt

with such universal themes as religion, labor, corruption, and justice; they employed human characters and

concrete symbols."More Nigerian authors meant more authors writing in English, including Wole Soyinka

and Chinua Achebe. Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, details the tragic

disintegration of Igbo clans upon the arrival of the Europeans. Igbo folklore saturates the novel, preserving

the African elements despite the English prose. Kofi Awonoor comments, "These [Igbo] proverbs are

intricately woven into the fabric of his style, completely absorbed to the extent that they constitute one of the

most significant features of his totally African-derived English style."The face of Nigerian, and African,

literature is changing and is evident from the works of autors like Achebe and Soyinka.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is part of a new generation of Nigerian authors swiftly

growing in reputation.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Was born in 1977 to a middle class Igbo family in

Enagu, Nigeria. Her mother Grace Ifeoma, The university of Nigeria's First female registrar while her father

James Nwoye was a professor of statistics there. The 5th of six children, she lived what she describes as a

very happy childhood, full of laughter and love in a very close knit family. Pressured by social and familial

expectation, She began to study medicine and pharmacy At the University of Nigeria.After one and a half

year She decides to persue Her ambitions as a writer, dropped out of medical school and took up a

communication in US. From day one,she became alert to racial generalisations having to address ‘the story
of catastrophe' And doc about the perspective of her American roommate about African continent. As She

aid, leaving Nigeria made me much more aware of being Nigerian and what that meant. It also made me

saware of race as concept, because I didn't think of myself as black until I left Nigeria. Adichie's 3 novels all

focuses on contemporary Nigerian culture, it’s political turbulence and at times how it can intersect with us.

She publsuYhed ‘purple hibiscus’ (2013), ‘Half of a ellow Sun’(2006) and ‘Americanah’ (2013). ‘Purple

Hibiscus’ is set in post colonial Nigeria a country beset by political instability and economic difficulties. It

Deals with story of fifteen year old Kambili and her family. ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is set during the Nigerian

Biafra War (1967-1970) in which Igbo people an Ethenic group of southern Nigeria -sought To establish an

independent Republic. Adichie choose three unlikely characters to narrate the story: A young houseboy, a

woman professor and an English writer who identifies as Biafrian . Adichie's third book,The Thing Around

Your Neck (2009), is a collection of 12 stories that explore the relationships between men and women,

parents and children, Africa and the United States. In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New

Yorker’s "20 Under 40" Fiction Issue. Adichie's story Ceiling was included in the 2011 edition of The Best

American Short Stories.In April 2014, she was named as one of 39 writers aged under 40 in the Hay Festival

and Rainbow Book Club project Africa 39, celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014.

In a 2014 interview, Adichie said on feminism and writing: "I think of myself as a storyteller but I would not

mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist writer... I'm very feminist in the way I look at the

world, and that world view must somehow be part of my work."In 2015, she was co-curator of the PEN

World Voices Festival. In 2020, Adichie published Zikora , a stand-alone short story about sexism and single

motherhood.In November 2020, Half of a Yellow Sun was voted by the public to be the best book to have

won the Woman;s Prize for Fiction in its 25-year history.In May 2021, Adichie released a memoir based on

her father's death titled Notes on Grief , based on an essay of the same title published in The New Yorker in

September 2020, As described by the reviewer for The Independent , "Her words put a welcome, authentic

voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided."Her another

famous work is Americanah. It was published in 2013 for which Adichie won the 2013 National Book

Critics Circle Fiction Award.In 2009, Adichie married Ivara Esege, a Nigerian doctor. Together they have

one daughter, who was born in 2016.

 Adichie never failed to express her views as such to the society.In her latest Ted Talk

she spoke about the danger of a single story. Adichie explains that if we only hear about a people , place or

situation from one point of view , we risk accepting one experience as the whole truth. She explains we

must seek diverse perspectives and in turn , writers must tell our own stories. One such book is

‘Americanah’.s Adichie’s Americanah seeks to portray African diaspora experiences in the U.S. through the

eyes of a Nigerian woman named Ifemelu and her lover, Obinze that contrast significantly from the

stereotypical and hideous representations of Africans by Western writers, including Joseph Conrad and

Joyce Cary. For instance, in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), which represent Africans as

barbaric and savage, reinforces and maintains the backwardness, inhuman and ferocious nature of Africa .