Afropolitanism in Adichie's Americanah: A Transcultural Afrodiasporic Study

Abstract

This study explores afropolitanism in Adichie's Americanah. Transculturalism as a sociocultural phenomenon is an emerging area of migration studies. The transcultural lens provides researchers the ability to transcend fixed notions of identity and belonging. Transcultural humanities is not just a discourse of intercultural dialogue but of mutual transformation. Transcultural literary studies and Afropolitan discourse and perspectives go together with contemporary cultural currents as they address the transcendental nature of cultural boundaries. A transcultural perspective sees the world as fluid and considers the contingency of culture about different visions, multilocal experiences, and indeterminate scope. It can cross boundaries and blur binaries. This study seeks to redefine and reimagine Africanness via the transcultural Afrodiasporic lens of Adichie. The Afropolitan transcultural writers tend to shun the idea of a single story of Africa and deconstruct the anomaly of perception linked with African literature. This study seeks to de-essentialize Africanness via the deconstruction of stereotypes and hyperreal images of Africa painted by both Afropessimists and the West. This study takes Selasian multilocal metropolitan discourse, Adichie's notion of the Danger of a Single Story, and Ben Okri's narrative of artistic freedom and blends these ideas with transcultural notions of plurality, politics of home, and cultural flux.