Intersectionality in "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Intersectionality in
Author: Lina Gildenstern
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2021-12-13
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3346555178

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", language: English, abstract: "Americanah" is a novel written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The narrative centers in the experience of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who migrated to the USA, and her childhood sweetheart Obinze, a Nigerian man who migrated to the UK, during their adolescence and adult life. Each of their identities is altered by the experiences they face in the Western world. In my term paper, I will analyze the processes of migration through the lens of Intersectionality. I want to show that it is not sufficient to analyze the obstacles they face based merely on race or nationality. Each of them faces different obstacles due to the Intersectionality of factors like race, gender, class, and political views. In the paper, I will focus on the Intersectionality of race and gender as Ifemelu and Obinze migrate away from and back to Nigeria. I will start my analysis by explaining the term Intersectionality. Then, I will elaborate on the stereotypical gender roles in Nigeria to overview the expectations regarding their gender Ifemelu and Obinze grew up with and eventually have to change once they move to the western world. In my main part, I will first analyze Ifemelu's migration story in terms of her gender and race. In this analysis, I will focus on the topics perception of beauty, mainly regarding hair, romantic relationships, and her experiences with finding a job in the USA. Secondly, I will analyze Obinze's migration story as a Black man by considering his relationship with women and their roles in society and his experiences with jobs in the UK. Lastly, I will compare their experiences with migration based on their different genders.

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1524733148

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Americanah gives us this powerful statement about feminism today—written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, a new mother who wanted to know how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response: fifteen invaluable suggestions—direct, wryly funny, and perceptive—for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Filled with compassionate guidance and advice, it gets right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century, and starts a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today. A Skimm Reads Pick ● An NPR Best Book of the Year

Feminist Studies

Feminist Studies
Author: Nina Lykke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2010-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136978984

In this book, feminist scholar Nina Lykke highlights current issues in feminist theory, epistemology and methodology. Combining introductory overviews with cutting-edge reflections, Lykke focuses on analytical approaches to gendered power differentials intersecting with other processes of social in/exclusion based on race, class, and sexuality. Lykke confronts and contrasts classical stances in feminist epistemology with poststructuralist and postconstructionist feminisms, and also brings bodily materiality into dialogue with theories of the performativity of gender and sex. This thorough and needed analysis of the state of Feminist Studies will be a welcome addition to scholars and students in Gender and Women’s Studies and Sociology.

So the Path Does Not Die

So the Path Does Not Die
Author: Pede Hollist
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9956727377

Protagonist Fina's search for happiness and belonging begins on the night of her aborted circumcision and continues through her teenage years in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital; her twenties in the Washington Metropolitan Area; and ends with her return to Sierra Leone to work as an advocate for war-traumatized children. The novel explores the problems she encounters in each setting against the backdrop of the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the stranger/immigrant condition and the characters' struggles to clarify their ideas about "home" and "abroad." Fina's circumcision gets significant, though not sensational, play in the different attitudes toward the practice between her and her fiance Cammy, a Trinidadian urologist. The differences complicate their relationship at a time when skeletons from their pasts threaten their impending marriage. The stories of Fina's friend, African-American Aman and her fiance, Nigerian Bayo; of Edna (Fina's foster sister) and her husband Kizzy; and of Mawaf, a war-traumatized teen, unfold in subplots that merge with the main plot and overarching theme of belonging as characters straddle "home" and "abroad" places."

Americanah

Americanah
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780008610517

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY'S WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 'A delicious, important novel' The Times 'Alert, alive and gripping' Independent 'Some novels tell a great story and others make you change the way you look at the world. Americanah does both.' Guardian As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. Ifemelu--beautiful, self-assured--departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze--the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor--had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion--for their homeland and for each other--they will face the toughest decisions of their lives. Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today's globalized world.

We Should All Be Feminists

We Should All Be Feminists
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 110191176X

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The highly acclaimed, provocative essay on feminism and sexual politics—from the award-winning author of Americanah In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2010-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307373541

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place. Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before.

Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Introduction to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Author: Associate Professor and Chair of Women's Studies L Ayu Saraswati
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9780190084875

Introduction to Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, Second Edition, reflects the exciting changes taking place in this field. Emphasizing both interdisciplinarity and intersectionality, this innovative mix of anthology and textbook includes key primary historical sources, debates on contemporary issues, and recent work in science, technology, and digital cultures. Readings from a range of genres--including poetry, short stories, op-eds, and feminist magazine articles--complement the scholarly selections and acknowledge the roots of creative and personal expression in the field. While the majority of selections are foundational texts, the book also integrates new work from established scholars and emerging voices to expand current debates in the field. The text is enhanced by thorough overviews that begin each section, robust and engaging pedagogy that encourages students to think critically and self-reflexively-and also to take action-as well as supplemental online resources for instructors.

Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia

Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia
Author: Stephanie Anne Shelton
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2018-06-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3319905902

This edited volume explores the diversities and complexities of women’s experiences in higher education. Its emphasis on personal narratives provides a forum for topics not typically found in in print, such as mental illness, marital difficulties, and gender identity. The intersectional narratives afford typically disenfranchised women opportunities to share experiences in ways that de-center standard academic writing, while simultaneously making these stories accessible to a range of readers, both inside and outside higher education.

Framing Intersectionality

Framing Intersectionality
Author: Helma Lutz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317133579

Originally conceived by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 as a tool for the analysis of the ways in which different forms of social inequality, oppression and discrimination interact and overlap in multidimensional ways, the concept of 'intersectionality' has attracted much attention in international feminist debates over the last decade. Framing Intersectionality brings together proponents and critics of the concept, to discuss the 'state of the art' with those that have been influential in the debates that surround it. Engaging with the historical roots of intersectionality in the US-based 'race-class-gender' debate, this book also considers the European adoption of this concept in different national contexts, to explore issues such as migration, identity, media coverage of sexual violence against men and transnational livelihoods of high and low skilled migrants. Thematically arranged around the themes of the transatlantic migration of intersectionality, the development of intersectionality as a theory, men's studies and masculinities, and the body and embodiment, this book draws on empirical case studies as well as theoretical deliberations to investigate the capacity and the sustainability of the concept and shed light on the current state of intersectionality research. Presenting the latest work from a team of leading feminist scholars from the US and Europe, Framing Intersectionality will be of interest to all those with interests in gender, women's studies, masculinity, inequalities and feminist thought.