Afrodescendant and gender identities in 'Americanah', by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: dialogues and reflections from the creation of Ifemelu’s blog

Abstract

Currently, the advancement of discussions on feminisms has been conquering more prominence in Brazil, propelling a series of debates on the condition of women in society. In this panorama, the representation of the black women in Afro-descendant literature stands out. The reach promoted by the Internet and its social networks and the organization of several groups show that it creates channels of expression and strengthening for the discussions on the literature made by women through the indication of readings, books, texts, and authors. In this context, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has conquered a place of influence by writing – and speaking – about feminism, identity, ethnicity and gender issues, themes which are present in her novel Americanah (2014). In questioning her place in society, the protagonist, Ifemelu, creates a blog in order to tell stories, write and reflect on her experience as a black woman born in Nigeria and living in the United States. Considering reading and writing as articulators of thinking about the place of black women in diaspora, the present work proposes a reading approach from the perspective of African heredity and of gender, having as its corpus of analysis the book Americanah. It also aims to investigate the different tessituras in the representation of Afrodescendant and gender identities, having as its guiding axis the creation process of Ifemelu’s blog. Therefore, it will be used references related to the concepts of identity, in Du Bois (1999), Hall (2014) and Munanga (1998), and of gender and feminism in Adichie (2015 and 2017) and Ribeiro (2017).