Return Migration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013)

Abstract

Analysing the transnational trajectory of Ifemelu, the protagonist of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), this chapter suggests that the novel is a fitting and congenial expression of the migratory movements of the new African diaspora. As the novel traces Ifemelu’s migration to the United States, her process of adaption, and her eventual return to Nigeria despite the success she has found in the States, it depicts her movement not as linear and one-directional. Instead, it exemplifies migratory processes that, as in Nigerian diaspora literature more generally, are multidirectional and oscillating between the continents and illustrates an attachment to Nigeria that might best described as ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ (Kwame Anthony Appiah).