AFRICAN IMMIGRANT FICTION IN THE US Identities in Transit By Layla Mahmood [11106026] MA Thesis
Supervisor: Dr George Blaustein 21/08/16
16642 words
I declare that this is my own work except where indicated otherwise with proper use of quotes and references
Chapter Outline
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: The African Diaspora & Afropolitanism Chapter Three: Analysis of Novel: Open City
Chapter Four: Analysis of Novel: Americanah Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
Chapter One
American Studies as a discipline has paid a large amount of scholarly attention to many immigrant groups and minorities in the US. These particular immigrant narratives are considered worthy of analysis in order to uncover more obscure socio-cultural issues within the US and beyond. The narratives reveal how identity is constructed, the role of cultural memory in the “New World,” and issues of racial and ethnic exclusion and inclusion in the US. The academic discipline has focused more strenuously on the latter issues of exclusion and inclusion. However, issues of identity and how it is negotiated in the US, with the aid of various theoretical lenses (that analyse race, gender and culture) is also extremely popular in the discipline. The advent of various postmodern theories and post-structuralist thought in academia has compounded this interest in exploring race, gender and culture.
The canon of immigrant narratives in American Studies includes vast amounts of research on Asian immigration. Research in this area has focused on landmark laws, such as, the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and research on the racial and ethnic prejudices towards Japanese
Americans, who were placed in internment camps during World War II and Pearl Harbor (Presman & Small 20). There is also a vast amount of scholarship regarding Jewish immigrants in the US and literature on Jewish American identity in American Studies.
The more contemporary immigrant narratives in the discipline largely focus on individuals and groups that descend from Latin America. Research that explores Latin American migration to the US is studied under the label: Chicano Studies. This scholarship proliferates the academic immigrant discourse in American Studies, and scholarship on ethnic identity and assimilation. However, the African immigrant experience in the US is largely over-looked as a prime source of
analysis within American Studies. Generally, African immigrant narratives take the back- seat to the more canonized immigrant tales of persecution, that was experienced by the Chinese, Japanese, Irish and Jewish. In regard to issues of identity, specifically related to ethnicity and race, and how they are negotiated in an American context; Chicano identity and African American identity are more focused on.
Famous for its lack of attention in US history, and described as “the most important piece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of,” the “Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965” opened the US borders to immigrants from African nations (Chude- Sokei “The Newly Black American” 59). Strikingly though, this African immigrant demographic is currently the fastest growing immigrant population in the US. In terms of the socio-cultural implications, diaspora academic Chude- Sokei believes that the arrival of African immigrants to the US caused “not only a redefinition of ‘white’ America, but also of ‘black’ America” (“The Newly Black American” 59). It is this “redefinition of “black America” which I find to be an important object of analysis. This thesis will explore this notion further, and specifically focus on how this notion is represented in African immigrant fiction in the US. I will analyse Chimamanda Ngozie Adiche's novel Americanah (2013) and Teju Cole's Open City (2011). Mainly, the thesis will explore issues of race and identity in a US context as portrayed by these African authors, and the representation of African identity in the aforementioned American landscape. However, the thesis will also focus on hybrid international identities and how identity is shaped and affected by its direct environment, origins and history.
Chude- Sokei discusses and highlights in the aformentioned article the need for a new interpretive frame-work to discuss the African Diaspora, harking for a “New African Diaspora” that expresses the varied black experiences, transcending Paul Gilroy's work in the The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1993). The author writes that the: “'Black Atlantic'
framework in which Africa exists only as ghostly evocations of slavery, and to a “'Black Diaspora' defined and delimited by the ideological preferences and experiential priorities of African
Americans” (55). Gilroy's interpretative framework falls short in interpreting voluntary African immigrant experiences. His framework also does not take into account the varied African immigrant experiences and how these diverge from the African American experience. In addition, Gilroy’s research does not explore how the African immigrant can shape and re-define conceptions of race and identity in the US.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie often states that when she came to the US she became “black” (Peed). Adiche’s insight illuminates the different conceptions of race and identity for African immigrants and African Americans, of which the latter was borne from a harsh system of slavery and racial hierarchical coding by a white hegemony.
W.E.B Du Bois is famed for his revolutionary sociological theories of race and the African American experience, describing this complex self-identification of the African American as one based on having a “double consciousness.” Du Bois elaborates on this conception in his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903):
this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his
twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (3)
Du Bois paints a portrait of the African American psyche as conflicted between warring
conceptions of the self. On the one hand the African American identifies as a “Negro,” a negative black identity constructed by a white hegemony, whereas on the other hand, the African American views himself as an American. Yet ultimately the African American is neither, but instead feels “his twoness.” According to Du Bois, the African American has “this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self” (4). Impressively, Du Bois' theories of race and African American identity are still relevant in contemporary times. This desire for African American self-determination is still a struggle in the US. African Americans are neither considered wholly African nor wholly American (in white hegemonic normative terms) but are instead a prefixed version, caught in between the two. These issues of African American identity are represented in much contemporary American popular culture and scholarship, such as, the films of Spike Lee and the literature of Bell Hooks.
African immigrant literature highlights this African American conception of race and identity, as it often clashes with the African's conception of identity, which appears more stable. Paradoxically, the African immigrant shares a similar history of white oppression to the African American, when considering colonisation. However, African immigrant literature often presents this history as less problematic for the African immigrant’s sense of self, in contrast to the African American’s sense of self. The African immigrant’s identity usually becomes unstable and
problematic when situated in a US context, and must come into contact with American conceptions of race.
According to Adichie, ethnicity plays a larger role than race, in terms of identification in Nigeria (Peed). Notions of “blackness” and what it connotes in the US, becomes a long and complex process of discovery for the main protagonist in Americanah. The protagonist- Ifemelu- must educate herself on African American customs and culture. For example, Ifemelu initially views the fashion of politically and socially aware African Americans as perplexing and comedic. The protagonist perceives the mish-mash of various conflicting African prints, there to express a
form of Africanness, as too unspecified and un-rooted for her to value as a Nigerian. This creation of Africanness for black identity construction, falls more in line with Gilroy's interpretative framework for transatlantic black identities and what Chude- Sokei discusses in relation to this. In which, “Africa” to African Americans as a point of reference is “ghostly” and merely “defined and delimited by the ideological preferences and experiential priorities of African Americans” (“The Newly Black American” 55). Whereas for Ifemelu, and many of the African protagonists in African immigrant fiction, Africa is not a ghostly foil or fantasy there to serve as a form of self-
determination for a fragmented identity. Instead, Africa is a real and tangible place for these protagonists, and they often reflect on memories of home. The immigrant fiction even goes to such places in Africa, expressing the diversity and complexity of Africa, and its individual nations, religions and values.
Adichie expands on this dynamic between the “African” and the “African American” in an interview with British writer Zadie Smith at the Schomburg Centre for Black Culture (New York) in 2014 (“Between the Lines: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with Zadie Smith”). Adichie comments that she did not like it when African American shop keepers referred to her as “sista” when she first moved to the United States because she did not want to be identified as an African American. The African American identity in this context, in a similar vein to the Du Bois discourse on the African American self, is again fraught with complexity because of its fragmentary and dark origins of slavery. However, Adichie notes that after learning about the specific history of African Americans and the legacy of slavery, she saw the positive elements to African American culture, interpreting much of the customs as ways of over- coming oppression and racism. For example, the term sista is now welcomed by Adichie, as she views it as a form of empowerment for African Americans. Adichie views the term sista as representing and reinforcing notions of inclusion to African Americans and to the black community in general in the US. The author notes that this term is important for a community that has experienced vast amounts of marginalization and exclusion (“Between the Lines: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with Zadie Smith”). These issues of race are expressed in a fictionalized manner in her book Americanah.
II
The texts I am analysing are also important in terms of their representation of African identity and of Africa. They diverge from stereotypical representations of African identity that has
bombarded much of Western fiction and popular culture. Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina describes this issues in his powerful piece called “How to Write about Africa” (2006). He writes:
in your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.
The novels I am analysing diverge from this Western literary tradition, by expressing the diversity of African cultures and identity. Africa is not depicted in a monolithic fashion in the literature I am analysing, but is instead specified. The geographical specificity in the novels impact how the protagonists interpret their surroundings in the US and reflect on their own identities.
Binyavanga also writes, “the continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.” The author follows with:
taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is
involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.
This last point of critique in regard to Western representations of Africa and African identity is noteworthy, as the novels I am analysing diverge from this significantly. Love between Africans is present in both novels. However, this element of “love between Africans” is represented most strongly in Americanah. The novel expresses a great deal of socio-political commentary regarding issues of immigration and race, but it is firstly a complex love story between Ifemelu and Obinze. Class is also a major theme in the novels I am analysing. The novels diverge from the Western literary tradition Wainana highlights by representing upper-class Africans that are not primitive. For example, the central characters in both novels are intellectual and educated. Ifemelu in Americanah does a fellowship at Princeton, and becomes a prolific blogger and spokesperson on matters of race in the US. Whilst in Open City the protagonist is a cosmopolitan psychiatrist, who is consistently referencing high cultural items. The protagonist references renaissance art and various canonized Western writers. However, the protagonist also references many forms of Nigerian art, folklore and literature.
Aside from the novels expression of various racial issues, the novels are also works of evocative and gripping literature. The novels demonstrate original writing, transcending a simplistic race and ethnic related literary category. In relation to this, Aaron Bady, an academic in African literature, muses on the problematic inherent in the term “African writer.” Bady believes many writers of African descent do not get to simply be writers, but also have the added pressure of expressing their Africanness. Bady states that:
at worst, the term is a ghetto: by expressing their literary in terms of identity, African writers are not quite allowed to be writers. Instead, they are called on to “perform their
Africanness,” as J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello put it, to be Africans who write about being African until the novel becomes sociology, politics, ethnography, anything but literature (Brady “African Writers in a New World”: An Introduction).
In lieu of this, I will incorporate literary theory and perform close readings on the use of language and literary devices within these works of literature, whilst contextualizing my findings with historiographical and theoretical context.
My methodology will also incorporate theories by: Paul Gilroy, Judith Butler, Stuart Hall and Frederic Jameson. The theorists will be used to understand how identity is expressed within the novels and to explore the larger significance this contains for current debates about race and identity in the US. In particular, I will incorporate Butler's theoretical term “category crisis,” in order to analyse the characters expression of identity. The term reveals how notions of categories, such as, gender (man and woman), race (black and white), or nationality (American and Nigerian) have become far looser and ambiguous in the current globalized post-modern society. In which, the Western binary way of thinking about culture and identity is consistently being interrogated and transformed (Fletcher 73). This interrogation of a binary conception of identity is reflected on in a review of Americanah. The review comments: “what is real, what is fake, how many layers of history and culture it takes to construct a national, or racial, or personal identity, and how contingent that identity is on its immediate surroundings” are all questions that the novel evokes (Clark). I will explore these types of questions in my research and analysis of the novels.
III
Researching African immigration to the US is not as clear cut as it may appear to be at first glance. Many questions arise when researching this type of immigration. Firstly, there are countless articles conflating African immigration to the US with the involuntary transfer of African migrants to the US during slavery. Again, this demonstrates the importance of my research and the
uniqueness of this particular immigration group. The issue represents how African immigrants and African- Americans are often grouped together because of skin colour. Technically, African- Americans are African, coming from the same continent as the new influx of voluntary African migrants. However, although the two intersect with one and other in various ways, they both share distinct lived experiences, and articulate different identities. For my research purposes, I will mainly
be focusing on the voluntary migration of Africans to the US after the aforementioned “Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965,” and how this has steadily increased.
From 1965 African immigration became more feasible, yet it was not until the 1980s that the US could boast an observed difference in its ethnic makeup. According to Zong and Batalova, from the Migration Policy Institute, between the 1980s- 2013: “the sub-Saharan African immigrant population in the United States increased from 130,000 to 1.5 million, roughly doubling each decade between 1980 and 2010. Between 2010 and 2013 the sub-Saharan African-born population increased a further 13 percent, from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.” Another observation that many scholars and researchers note, is that more African immigrants are arriving now than they did during slavery, increasing the need for studies on this “new diaspora” (Roberts).
Additionally, anthropologist Jack David Eller writes:
One of the most underappreciated yet remarkable developments in African-American demographics has been the upsurge in new immigrants from Africa. When most Americans think of “African American,” they think of an ancestry of slavery in the US going back generations. However according to the Population Reference Bureau (http://www.prb.org), the foreign-born black population of the US increased from less than 1 percent of all US born blacks in 1980 to 8 percent in 2005-- threatening to change the very meaning of the term “African- American.” (56)
There have also been academic attempts to define this New African Diaspora (by Ali Mazrui), and interrogate the term “African American,” by creating the term “American Africans” (Okpewho & Nzegwu 5). Americanah, elaborates on this idea of the “American Africans.” However, that will be elaborated on later in the essay.
Regarding statistics and specificities, Eller goes on to specify from which African nations these immigrants originated. He states that: “from 2008 to 2009, more than 1 million new black African immigrants stepped ashore, of whom 201,000 originated in Nigeria, 143,000 in Ethiopia, 110,000 in Ghana, and 68,000 in Kenya. Interestingly, not all immigrants from Africa were black; in fact, only 74 percent were” (56). Eller's passage illuminates how African Americans and African immigrants paradoxically intersect and counter one and other. The two groups differ in their
conceptions of identity and origins. However, they also call for a re-evaluation of the term “African American.” This term becomes more skewed when taking into account second and third generation African immigrants in the US. For example, how does this term define the children of these African immigrants that proliferated in the 80s onwards? And how do these children negotiate traditional African American culture with the culture their parents?
Historian and literary critic Paul Tiyambe Zeleza criticizes this conflation of African
American and African immigrant identities under the universalizing term of “the African Diaspora.” He writes that:
it is not easy, but we must try to transcend the discursive politics of the term 'diaspora', which has, one author complains, 'imposed a U.S. and English language-centered model of black identity on the complex experiences of populations of African descent'. After all, the term 'African diaspora' only emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, but African diasporas existed long before then in different parts of the world, and African peoples were mobilized using other terms, such as Pan-Africanism. (269).
He adds, discussing how conceptions of the “African diaspora” have become monolithic in nature: part of the difficulty is that many diaspora scholars, if they are not already ethnocentric in thinking that the experiences of their chosen community are representative of the African diaspora in its totality, are linguistically challenged, unversed in the many languages, and hence the literatures and discourses, of the African diasporas in the Americas, let alone in other parts of the world. (39).
This is indeeed accurate, however, there has been a surge within the recent decade, attempting to remedy the short comings of the traditional conception of the African Diaspora. Research regarding the “New African Diaspora” has increased during the last decade, with scholars such as, Chude-Sokei and Ali Mazrui. However, research and debates about the “New African Diaspora” will be discussed in the next chapter, after a brief discussion about the tensions between African Americans and African immigrants.
III
In regard to scholarly arguments surrounding the interpretation of the texts, there are many. For example, the concept of “cosmopolitanism” is a central point of criticism of Open City. There are different interpretations of whether or not the novel affirms or interrogates this normative notion. Cosmopolitanism is a term that evokes positive global connotations; seeking to promote the philosophy of a borderless community of identities that transcends race, region, religion and time (Vermeulen 42). However, the book can be read as a critical interrogation of cosmopolitanism, as the main protagonist- who is half Nigerian, half German and lives in the US- is consistently musing on historic atrocities specifically related to the injustices of ethnic and racial minorities. For
instance, the protagonist muses on the persecution of US domestic Japanese citizens in WWII and slavery. The novel also goes on to discuss more contemporary injustices (racial and ethnic
prejudices) performed by the US in the post 9/11 climate. The novel represents the tensions inherent in a “cosmopolitan society,” portraying how ideas of a peaceful cosmopolitan society are constantly in conflict with older ideas of nationhood and identity.
Scholarly writing in regard to Americanah touches on similar issues related to this notion of cosmopolitanism, but also focuses on issues of representation. Many scholars applaud the novel for its political power to subvert white American hegemonic representations of African (Nigerian) and black identity, viewing the novel as being able change one's (white Western) view of the world (Hallemeier 240). In contrast, some scholars view the author as only re-inscribing existing stereotypes of Nigerians (corruption, religious extremism, strikes). However, in regard to cosmopolitanist and postmodern ideas, Americanah represents the tensions inherent in identity construction within a globalized cosmopolitan society.
Modernism and postmodernism share similarities in their social and philosophical frames of thought. Though, the two frames of thought also significantly diverge from one and other. Frederic Jameson describes the similarities and differences between the two in his book
Postmodernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1992). Jameson writes that: “it is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place” (ix). According to Jameson, in
postmodernity (an era that began in the 1960s, and that continues until the present time) a linear conception of time and history, in which Progress can occur, no longer exists. However, in postmodernity, the present is always viewed as a product of its historical moment. The author elaborates with:
postmodernism, postmodern consciousness, may then amount to not much more than
theorizing its own condition of possibility, which consists primarily in the sheer enumeration of changes and modifications. Modernism also thought compulsively about the New and tried to watch its coming into being (inventing for that purpose the registering and
inscription devices akin to historical time-lapse photography), but the postmodern looks for breaks, for events rather than new worlds, for the telltale instant after which it is no longer the same. (ix)
In modernism, the idea of the New is very different from the idea of the New in postmodern conscioussness. Indeed, theories of social construction began to crop up during modernity, but modernists still believed to a large extent in conceptions of society and objects as being essential. This is illustrated in the presence of Enlightenment theories of rationality, Progress and an absolute truth in the modern era. Conversely, postmodernist conciousness does not believe in an absolute truth, nor does it view society in an essentialist fashion. As Jameson states, it is more interested in the breaks in society where changes occur, rather than looking “for new worlds.” Postmodernism is
not interested in a “new world” because it does not believe in the idea and possibility of a “new world.”
Stuart Hall adheres to a theory of identity that is largely based on a postmodern understanding of society and culture. Hall states that one should not view:
identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a 'production', which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation. This view problematises the very authority and authenticity to which the term, 'cultural identity', lays claim . (222) In this sense, identity is never complete and static (essential), but is instead continuously being created and produced. Furthermore, representation in this postmodern context is not separate from identity (in which it serves as a mirror to represent that concrete identity), but is instead apart of constructing that identity; an identity that is constantly in flux and subject to change.
IV Argument
Americanah and Open City represent identities that are in conflict. The novels do not ascribe to a wholly modernist, nor a wholly postmodernist conception of society, culture and identity. Instead the novels highlight the tensions inherent in a contemporary globalized society, which adhere to both modernist and postmodernist ideas simultaneously. The novels represent the lucidity of identity and race within the postmodern era, by contesting harmonious notions of ethnic and racial solidarity. The novels contest harmonious notions of cosmopolitanism, where individuals
supposedly experience un-conflicted subjectivities whilst crossing borders. Traditional modernist notions of identity and nationhood, with clearly demarcated borders, are becoming more obscure and less static. However, these modernist ideas are still alive within the contemporary landscape, and cause tensions with the rise of globalization, and the transfer of individuals and ideas across borders.
Open City and Americanah portray this tension between modernist and postmodern frames of thought in different ways. Open City portrays a protagonist that aspires to be a cosmopolitan global citizen, not belonging to any specific nation or race. However, he cannot escape his race and ethnicity in the novel. When the protagonist meets other individuals with the same race and
contrast, Americanah portrays this tension by placing her Nigerian protagonist in America, where she is forced to confront American conceptions of her race and ethnicity, and negotiate them with her own.
Lastly, the protagonists transatlantic outsider positions in the US in the novels work as a device to explore issues of race, ethnicity and identity in the US. However, their African
transatlantic positions also enable them to function politically, serving as postcolonial literature, rejecting monolithic ideas of African and black identities.
The African Diaspora & Afropolitanism
Chapter Two
II
African Americans and African immigrants are often portrayed as being in conflict with one another in research and in immigrant fiction. Literary critic Martyn Bone, writes
native-born descendants of African slaves have exhibited ambivalence about the arrival of another kind of African American. Tension has emerged over issues ranging from jobs (African migrants are often perceived by whites as being more compliant and hard-working than native U.S. blacks) to affirmative action programs in universities (an ongoing Princeton study shows that 40 percent of black students at Ivy League universities are actually
immigrants or the children of immigrants). (qtd. in Chude Sokei 62)
Bone's observations direct us to an issue that has emerged in recent decades, and that reflect a pattern when analysing the relationship between immigrants and African Americans. It seems that in many cases African immigrants are becoming a new type of model minority. This is in part due to the types of African immigrants that come to America, many of which are already educated with degrees, ranging from BA's to PHD's; or that simply come the US with scholarships for university. Historian Eric Foner, stated that “historically, every immigrant group has jumped over American-born blacks” and that “the final irony would be if African immigrants did, too” (qtd. in Brown). Americanah and Open City reflect this characteristic of the successful African immigrant community in the US. As stated in the introduction, both of the main protagonists
are highly educated and come from backgrounds that value education and ambition. Julius in Open City is a psychiatrist who is consistently making high culture references, taking an interest in literature and music that reflect his high class. Ifemelu, comes from a lower class family but is also extremely educated. Her family values education, encouraging her to get a scholarship. As such, when Ifemelu migrates to the US, she does so on a scholarship for university, which places her in higher class than a typical immigrant. Additionally, Ifemelu does not have to deal with the same types of institutionalized racism many African Americans experience. Americanah does indeed explore some of these tensions between the two groups in the US, though this will be discussed later in my analysis of the novel. However, this element is not wholly representative of all the African immigrants who migrate to the US. Though there may be tensions between the groups in the US, many African migrants do not come to the US and prosper. The immigrant group also inhabits the lower part of the economic and social strata within the US. The diversity of the African immigrant experience will be elaborated on in the following paragraphs regarding the New African Diaspora. The novels under consideration of this thesis both participate in, and fictionalize,
contemporary debates about the New African Diaspora. This self-conscious element of the novels places them partly in a postmodern genre. There has been an increasing desire in the contemporary era to re-define the traditional conception of the African Diaspora, framed by the likes of Paul Gilory in his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1993). However, although there is this desire for a New African Diaspora, in order to express the
contemporary African Diaspora more accurately, it should still be noted that Gilroy paved the way for intriguing discussions on the nature of race and transatlantic identity. Whereby, he created a conception of transnational black identity that refuted racially charged Eurocentric notions of blackness and Africa (Goyal v). Goyal elaborates on this aspect of Gilory's work, discussing why Gilroy criticized Afrocentrism so fervently, stating:
at once nostalgic, triumphalist, and compensatory, Afrocentrism situates Africa as origin, authenticity, and purity. Such romantic narratives fail to refute Eurocentric racism because they accept its assumptions of an essential division between Africa and the West and prioritize an image of Africa as anterior to modernity. (Goyal v)
In other words, Gilroy participated in breaking down essentialist ideas of black identity that were based on romantic and primitive notions of Africa.
Academic Peter Erickson elaborates on this notion of essentialising the black subject in The African American Review. Erickson writes that the issue of the “African American literary canon formation was its tendency to overemphasize static internal roots at the expense of dynamic external routes” (506). These “dynamic external routes” were based on the international travels conducted by Europeans and African Americans, and the inter-cultural exchanges that followed. Furthermore,
these “static internal roots” described by Erickson was embraced by Afrocentrism. In Afrocentrism there was a utopian desire within the black subject to reject white Western normative ideologies, harking for a return to “Africa.” I write “Africa” in quotation marks because it was an idealized image of Africa that was not completely based on reality. Afrocentrism constructed a romantic mythic representation of Africa that was more in line with exoticism. This exotic depiction of Africa ironically fed into a racist Western conception of black identity, representing Africa and blackness as an “Other.”
Gilroy, who was influenced by Stuart Hall's theories, wanted to escape binary and static representations of black identity. He was in favour of a more lucid and hybridized conception of identity. In the Black Atlantic he expresses this astutely within his passage on the African American author Richard Wright (1908-60), who like James Baldwin travelled to Europe and wrote about his experience. In the passage, Gilroy writes:
the part of his work which resists assimilation to the great ethnocentric canon of African-American literature have been left unread, and much of it is now out of print. On either side of the Atlantic, historians of European literature and philosophy have shown little interest in his work or in its relationship to those Euro-writers and schools of expression with whom he interacted. (186)
Gilroy adds:
examining his route from the particular to the general, from America to Europe and Africa, would certainly get us out of a position where we have to choose between the unsatisfactory alternatives of Eurocentricism and black nationalism. The first ignores Wright, the second says that everything that happened to him after he left America is worthless for the schemes of black liberation. Wright was neither an affiliate of western metaphysics who just
happened to be black nor an ethnic African American whose essential African identity asserted itself to animate his comprehensive critique of western radicalism. Perhaps more than any other writer he showed how modernity was both the period and the region in which black politics grew. His work articulates simultaneously an affirmation and a negation of the western civilisation that formed him. It remains the most powerful expression of the insider-outsider duality which we have traced down the years from slavery. (186)
Gilory's decision to focus on such a figure in history (although he may be less known), reflects his desire to explore the ambiguities of identity, in which, travel becomes an important vehicle in the hybridity of identity construction.
However, although Gilroy laid these important foundations and frameworks for the study of black identity, with his focus on cultural hybridity and travel, he did not explore his ideas further enough to offer an alternative mode of thinking in regard to Africa and African identity. His ideas
mainly aid in understanding black identity in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, but does not offer instructive ways of thinking about African identity that was formed by colonisation, and the differentiation within that experience.
In response to Gilory's shortcoming, or the vacuum that was left by his socio-philosophical framework for black identity, scholars have called for a New African Diaspora. Following a lecture on this topic, Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu published a book titled The New African
Diaspora (2009), which is composed of a compilation of essays from numerous scholars on the subject. Scholar Carol Boyce Davies discusses the book, and Ali Mazrui's contribution within it. Davies states that Mazrui differentiates between the old and new African Diasporas. Mazrui defines the old diaspora as a “diaspora of enslavement” and the new one as a “diaspora of imperialism” (208). Davies elaborates:
in the end it may be a useful distinction because there are clearly different political imperatives and professional drives that make postcolonial African migrations and the creation of the new African Diaspora different from the earlier transatlantic enslavement-forced diaspora. For one thing, though in many ways induced by economic and political factors, it is still a largely voluntary migration. In particular, such recent migration is driven by the failure or delays of postcolonial African states to realize the hopes of independence. (208)
Davies points to an interesting difference between the old and new diaspora, a topic that is discussed in Americanah. “Enslavement” and “imperialism” both represent a form of hegemonic subordination and oppression, but the two articulate themselves differently. The enslavement of the latter, is one that is coerced by global inequality, but still has a degree of choice, while the former has no choice and is dehumanized in a complex process of forced chattel-slavery.
The notion of there being a degree of choice for the African immigrant who is a part of the New African Diaspora, casts new concerns and anxieties for the African immigrant, which diverge from issues related to the old diaspora.
Chapter six of the aforementioned book, titled: “The West is Cold”: Experiences of
Ghananian Performers in England and the US,” highlights this difference. The chapter begins with a poem from a Ghanian (Koo Nimo) who is a part of the New African Diaspora, exclaiming:
Mother, oh Mother, your son has made a terrible journey. Now I am stranded overseas.
Darkness has encircled me.
There can be no witness to what I endure alone. An unsuccessful mission is a disgrace,
So how can we come home?
If you fail, no child can be named after you. Death is preferable to shame.
The cold weather gets so bitter men lose their senses. Poverty, family problems, illness and accidents. All aggravate the stranger's sad state.
Married or single, life is not pleasant in a foreign land. (127)
In the poem, pain is not directed to a “white oppressor,” or system that is beyond them, it is instead directed to themselves. The author's migration is described as an “unsuccessful mission.” He follows this quote with self-deprecating adjectives, such as, “shame” and “disgrace.”
The title of Koo Nimo's poem- Aborokyri Abcabo- compounds this sense of meloncholy. The word Aborokyri is an Akan term that translates to “the land beyond the cornfields,” connoting to a world outside of Africa, generally referring to the West (Okpewho & Nzegwu 128). The West is seen as an economically fulfilling promise land in this Akan context. However, for many African
immigrants the promised land does not prove to be so promising, and they must negotiate living in a land where they are alienated from the comforts of their community. African immigrants must deal with the coldness of their environment (both metaphorically and literally).
Additionally, in the introduction to the New African Diaspora Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu express how older notions of “Africa” do not encapsulate the diversity of the African immigrant experience. The diversity of the New African Diaspora experience has been a
contentious issue for scholars of the subject. The term “Afropolitanism” has been held under attack under such a premise.
The term “Afropolitanism” has recently emerged in the discourse on translatlantic African identity. Author Achille Mbembe describes Afropolitanism “as a way of being “African” open to difference and conceived as transcending race” (Mongin et. al). Afropolitanism uses the concept of cosmopolitanism in order to define a globalized African identity. Author Taiye Selasi frequently promotes the term, as she was born in the UK and raised in the US, yet has Ghanian and Nigerian roots. In her piece entitled “Bye-Bye Bar Bar” (2005) she notes that:
what distinguishes this lot [afropolitans] and its like (in the West and at home) is a
willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honor what is wonderful, unique. Rather than essentialising the geographical entity,
we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity; to honor the intellectual and spiritual legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures.
This concept of culture and identity embraces ideas of cosmopolitanism, and anti-essentialism. Afropolitanism is more in line with a postmodern ideology as opposed to a modernist one. This is reflected in the concepts refusal to “oversimplify” culture. The concept also adheres to a non-binary ideological framework when viewing identity, embracing postmodern notions, such as, ambiguity. However, Afropolitanism has come under attack by many Pan-African scholars, who view it as only representing a bourgeoisie group of African global citizens. Critics of Afropolitanism believe that the term ignores widespread differentiation and economic inequality within the African community. Dabiri writes in “Why I am Not An Afropolitan” (2014):
the danger of Afropolitanism becoming the voice of Africa can be likened to the criticisms levelled against second wave feminists who failed to identify their privilege as white and middle class while claiming to speak for all women. Because while we may all be Africans, there is a huge gap between my African experience and my father’s houseboys.
Scholar Dabiri touches on issues that are common in the anti- Afropolitan discourse. These critics believe that Afropolitanism is far too entrenched in capitalism and consumerism. And that
Afropolitans usually encompass the elite demographic, misrepresenting Africa and its economic and cultural diversity. In regard to this critique of the term, Dabiri writes: “the dominance of fashion and lifestyle in Afropolitanism is worthy of note due to the relationship between these industries,
consumption and consumerism.” The author quotes Afro-Carribean philosopher Frantz Fanon, who discusses the large gap in economic equality in Africa: “'a dual economy is not a developed
economy,'. It is largely in the pockets of the mobile Afropolitan class that much of the wealth is held.” Dabiri's criticisms do hold some weight when considering passages of Selasi's article regarding Afropolitans:
it’s moments to midnight on Thursday night at Medicine Bar in London. Zak, boy-genius DJ, is spinning a Fela Kuti remix. The little downstairs dancefloor swells with smiling, sweating men and women fusing hip-hop dance moves with a funky sort of djembe. The women show off enormous afros, tiny t-shirts, gaps in teeth; the men those incredible torsos unique to and common on African coastlines. The whole scene speaks of the Cultural Hybrid: kente cloth worn over low-waisted jeans; ‘African Lady’ over Ludacris bass lines; London meets Lagos meets Durban meets Dakar. Even the DJ is an ethnic fusion: Nigerian and Romanian; fair, fearless leader; bobbing his head as the crowd reacts to a sample of ‘Sweet Mother’.
they (read: we) are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants, coming soon or collected already at a law firm/chem lab/jazz lounge near you. You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss; others merely cultural mutts: American accent, European affect, African ethos. Most of us are multilingual: in addition to English and a Romantic or two, we understand some indigenous tongue and speak a few urban vernaculars. There is at least one place on The African Continent to which we tie our sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city (Ibadan), or an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s the G8 city or two (or three) that we know like the backs of our hands, and the various institutions that know us for our famed focus. We are
Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.
Fashion and consumer culture appear to be a part of the conception of the term. Also, the part that reads “they (read: we) are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants, coming soon or collected already at a law firm/chem lab/jazz lounge near you,” represents the elite nature of this specific African group of global citizens.
However, even though Afropolitanism seems to represent an elite demographic of the African diaspora (representing a sharp contrast to the earlier poem), it does offer some useful ideological frameworks to think about identity, and adds a political dimension to its definition. The term promotes ideas and concepts that are important in understanding the complex times we live in, and how that impacts identity construction. For example, Selasi references the term “cultural hybrid” in her definition of Afropolitanism, which is important when considering the rapid migrations of not only people, but also of culture and ideas. The continuous advancement of the internet and social media should also be taken into account when acknowledging the latter point of cultural hybridity.
There are numerous internet platforms that are creating spaces for African diasporas, whereby cultural exchange and appropriations are happening at unprecedented rates. The internet has
contributed to the formation of hybridized identities (e.g the website Afropunk). Even though many Pan- Africanists oppose Afropolitanism, the two share similarities, in that they believe in a unified African identity that embraces heterogeneity. Afropolitanism could strive to incorporate more class consciousness within its ideology, but it still leans towards similar aspirations of Pan- Africanism. The positive aspect of Afropolitanism is that it also carves out a space within cosmopolitanism that takes into account the impact of race and ethnicity, and ideas of rootedness within a globalized context. Furthermore, Afropolitanism, much like Pan- Africanism, has a political dimension. The concept is not static, nor simply a marker. The concept is a mobilizing term that reinforces a positive image of Africa, that is both diverse and beautiful. Afropolitanism attempts to remedy the
long history of a one-dimensional, exotic or paternalistic (the portrayal of poverty and war) representation of Africa. Afropolitanism, like Pan- Africanism, seeks to reject this notion and project a more complex and positive images of African identity and of Africa itself.
As has been illustrated, the New African Diaspora is complex. There are competing notions of what is the right way to construct African identity, and to what theories can adequately describe and define the New African Diaspora.
Analysis of Novel
Chapter Three III
Open City
Teju Cole's transatlantic background is reflected in the protagonist of Open City. The novel represents many of Cole's interests in cosmopolitanism and identity in the globalized era. Open City is not an autobiography, even though there are many parallels between the protagonist Julius and Cole. Much like Julius, Cole's identity is not clear-cut. Cole's identity, instead, occupies a space in-between nations. Cole considers himself a Nigerian- American. He was born in Michigan and raised in Nigeria, only to come back to the US to study Art History at Columbia. Currently, he lives in the US and Nigeria. Cole, whilst pursuing his PHD wrote the short story Every Day is For The Thief (2007) and Open City (his only works of literature, excluding his journalism). Every Day is For The Thief is often considered a prequel to Open City because of its similar themes and style of writing. Whereas, Open City follows Julius and his ruminations as he walks through New York City, Every Day is For The Thief does exactly the same, only in Lagos, Nigeria. The novella is a very loose form of fiction, extremely close to autobiography, as it follows its main protagonist as he returns from the US to Lagos. Passages from the story reflect Cole's main interests:
when I start speaking Yoruba, the man I’ve been haggling with over some carved masks laughs nervously. “Ah oga,” he says, “I didn’t know you knew the language, I took you for an oyinbo, or an Ibo man!” I’m irritated. What subtle flaws of dress or body language have, again, given me away? This kind of thing didn’t happen when I lived here, when I used to pass through this very market on my way to my exam preparation lessons. (94)
Cole also states how other market hagglers yell “white man to him” as he passes them by (94). This passage expresses the complexity of transatlantic identities, and the internal conflict within the individual. The protagonist's identity no longer occupies a clear-cut and static rooted position (e.g being simply Nigerian), but has instead been influenced by the US and has lost the “codes” of his
traditional identity. The novella continues to explore this notion, revealing the protagonist's complicated relationship to his past, identity and history, exploring issues of nationhood that have been severely impacted by migrations and global inequality.
Open City elaborates on these questions of identity through the character of Julius, but also through the character of New York City. Cole discusses his novel and its relationship to urban planning during a unique lecture about Open City that invited urban planners and architects as the audience (“The City as Palimpsest - Teju Cole”). In the lecture, Cole introduces his idea of “the city as a palimpsest.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a palimpsest is a “paper, parchment, or other writing material designed to be reusable after any writing on it has been erased.” Open City articulates this notion well, as the novel is filled with moments where Julius enters spaces in the city and muses on its history and what preceded its current formation. The most evocative scene where this occurs is when Julius visit Ground Zero. He describes the darkness of 9/11, stating that “no bodies were visible, except the falling ones, on the day America's ticker stopped” (58). However, this is then followed by:
this was not the first erasure on the site. Before the towers went up, there had been a bustling network of little streets traversing this part of town. Robinson's street, Laurens Street, College Place: all of them had been obliterated in the 1960s to make way for the Word Trade Centre buildings, and all were forgotten now. Gone, too, was the old Washington Market, the active piers, the fish wives, the Christian Syrian enclave that was established here in the late 1800s. The Syrians, the Lebanese, and other people from the Levant had been pushed across the river to Brooklyn, where they'd set down roots on Atlantic Avenue and in Brooklyn Heights. And, before that? What Lenape paths lay buried beneath the rubble? The site was a palimpsest, as was all the city, written, erased, rewritten. (59) This scene encapsulates Cole's interest in identity and memory. The reader does not simply get a melancholic memorial of the tragedy of 9/11, but also of the tragedy of civilization throughout history, and notions of progress. Additionally, the identity of the city is not fixed and static, but is instead a palimpsest for continuous re-inventions. This notion of reinvention falls in line with a postmodern conception of culture and identity. However, Cole's interest in documenting the history that has been inscribed on this palimpsest throughout the centuries also reveals his desire to remain rooted in some way, through his attachment and value of cultural memory.
In lieu of this, Cole's novel contest's Frederic Jameson's notion of postmodern society and culture as being characterized as “depthless” (6). Jameson views contemporary societies
“relationship to public History” as un-rooted and “schizophrenic,” creating what he believes to be an apathetic and apolitical society (6). However, Open City contests Jameson's view of
forgotten historic atrocities, in the face of a vanishing historical memory within an ever changing cosmopolitan society, illustrates this.
In relation to race and ethnicity, Julius' identity represents this tension between modernism and postmodernism, in which he consistently tries to avoid categorization, yet is constantly forced to reconcile with his African ethnicity and race. This tension is demonstrated during the many scenes where he encounters African Americans or African immigrants. The passage below illustrates this conflict and Julius' desire to avoid categorization. Prior to this passage, Julius is reflecting on his museum visit, and rushes into a cab whilst still in a daze:
when my address filtered its way back to me, I gave it to the cab driver and said to him. So, how are you doing, my brother? The driver stiffened and looked at me in the mirror.
Not good, not good at all, you know, the way you came into my car without saying hello, that was bad. Hey I'm African just like you, why you do this? He kept me in his sights in the mirror. I was confused. I said, I'm so sorry about it, my mind was elsewhere, don't be
offended, ehn, my brother, how are you doing? He said nothing, and faced the road. I wasn't sorry at all. I was in no mood for people who tried to lay claims on me. (40)
There are many scenes where this occurs, where Julius would rather continue his existence
voyeuristically. He would rather be a blank palimpsest himself, there only to document the history and the complexities of a postmodern cosmopolitan society. However, he is confronted with static notions of race consistently in the form of racial solidarity.
For example, this also occurs when a black Caribbean guard at a museum he has visited earlier in the novel approaches him, assuming he will remember him too because of their shared race. The guard states:
you don't recognize me, he said, raising his eyebrows. I noticed you at the museum, about a week ago, the Folk Art Museum. My face must have remained foggy because he added: I'm a guard there, and that was you I saw, right? I nodded, faint though the memory was. He said, I knew I recognized your face. We shook hands, and he introduced himself as Kenneth. He was dark skinned, bald with a broad, smooth forehead and a carefully trimmed pencil moustache. His upper body was powerful, but his legs were spindly, so that he looked like like Nabokov's Pnin come to life.
The guard (Kenneth) added:
most of these Americans don't know any place, other than what's right infront of their noses, he said...He asked me where I was from, what I did. He spoke fast, chattily. One of my house mates, once, in Colorado, he said, was a Nigerian. He was called Yemi. Yoruba, I think he was, and I'm really interested in African culture anyway. Are you Yoruba? Kenneth was by now, starting to wear on me, and I began to wish he would go away. I thought of the
cab driver who had driven me home from the Folk Art Museum—hey I'm African just like you. Kenneth was making a similar claim. (53)
It would be easy at this point to understand and agree with Julius' frustrations, particularly because of the intense subjectivity of the book. The entire novel is after all centred on Julius' perspective and thoughts. The novel only captures fragments of conversations he has with others, but it does not delve into their minds and perspectives in the same fashion. However, soon after this event, Julius continues his journey around New York city. This time he walks to the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island situated beyond it. Julius reflects on the mythic nature of Ellis Island and how it had been:
built too late for those early Africans—who weren't immigrants in any case—and it had been closed too soon to mean anything to the later Africans like Kenneth, or the cabdriver, or me. Ellis Island was a symbol mostly for European refugees. Blacks, “we blacks,” had rougher ports of entry; this I could admit to myself now that my mood was less impatient, was what the cabdriver had meant. This was the acknowledgement he wanted, in his brusque fashion, from every “brother” he met. (55)
This passage of the book illuminates the complicated position of the global African citizen and immigrant. In this American context, racial consciousness (which includes knowledge on racial injustices) becomes forced on to the African immigrant because of racial solidarity amongst black identities. Furthermore, the passage above illustrates the conflict within Julius, who wants to be a detached cosmopolitan traveller of the globe, yet he cannot escape his race and ethnicity, nor the history that is attached to it. However, as alienated and as detached as he is throughout the novel, the passage above reflects that he understands the value in racial solidarity, in which terms like “brother” become politicized. This sense of perspective, further complicates his internal struggle in relation to his identity and how he should behave amongst other black identities, causing a sense of guilt within himself.
Interestingly, Vermeulen interprets Julius as caught inbetween the flâneur figure in literature and the lesser known fugueur figure, writing:
when read closely, we can see that Julius’s posture as a cosmopolitan flâneur is shadowed by the contours of a more sinister, and mostly forgotten, nineteenth-century figure of restless mobility: the fugueur. Fugueurs emerged in urban areas in France at the end of the
nineteenth century; they were “mad travelers” who unaccountably walked away from their lives and, when found, were unable to remember what had happened on these trips, let alone what had motivated them to set out on them in the first place. Ian Hacking, who has devoted a monograph to the late-nineteenth-century fugue epidemic, notes that fugues need to be understood as a parody of the mass tourism that was then emerging. (42)
This sense of restless mobility does appear to promote a more critical view of cosmopolitanism and globalization. Vermeulen interprets Julius' cosmopolitan character (an individual beyond rooted identity) as a farce, in which Julius serves to interrogate this notion of cosmopolitanism rather than affirm it. Julius' consistent confrontation with his black identity, and notions of history, in the form of racial solidarity, affirm this interpretation. The novel indeed interrogates, rather than affirms a sense of cosmopolitan identity. Yet, the novel does not out rightly dismiss cosmopolitanism. The novel instead expresses the particular difficulties in achieving this sense of cosmopolitanism for the African black subject.
Furthermore, in relation to the fuguer element of Julius' character, I would like to include a passage by another scholar, who takes a similar interpretation as Vermeulen. Dalley compares the novel with another immigration narrative, writing:
Open City, by contrast, approaches the global-local nexus from the perspective of migration. Its Nigerian-born protagonist, Julius, is a self-consciously cosmopolitan New Yorker, whose long walks across the city prompt reflections on the patterns of immigration and exile that constitute the layered historicism of the urban space... Julius resists all
attempts to fix him to a stable spatio-temporal location. He denies the need for rootedness in favor of a mannered performance of worldly sophistication—a pretense masking repressed memories that, when revealed, undermine his celebration of cosmopolitan disinterestedness. (43)
In accordance with Vermeulen, Dalley discusses the shortcomings of Julius' cosmopolitan identity, believing that it is actually a “pretense.” Much like the fuguer figure, who would have memory loss, Julius too has “repressed memories.” This element of his character becomes clear to the reader when we discover that Julius has raped a woman. The rape victim (Moji) expresses this all in detail to Julius at a dinner party with great emotion (246). The sense of “cosmopolitan disinterestedness” is undermined when the reader comes across this section near the end, as Moji's story invokes empathy for the reader. However, during her emotional monologue Julius remains silent, whereby his thoughts that follow after her monologue transgress into descriptions of the river and a story about Nietzsche (246). The rest of the novel does not go back to this story, and the reader is only left with fragment of a traumatic event that inspires no emotion within Julius.
The ethnic and racial makeup of Julius also represents this dichotomy between modernist and postmodern notions of identity. Julius is half Nigerian and half German, with ties to the US, Nigeria and Brussels, all of which impact his identity construction. In “Cultural Identity Diaspora” Stuart Hall writes an informative passage regarding cultural identity:
there is, however, a second, related but different view of cultural identity. This second position recognizes that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical
points of deep and significant difference which constitute "'what we really are"'; or rather— since history has intervened—"'what we have become"'. We cannot speak for very long, with any exactness, about "'one experience, one identity"', without acknowledging its other side—the ruptures and discontinuities which constitute, precisely, the Caribbean's
"'uniqueness"'. Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of "'becoming"' as well as "'being"'. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from
somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous "'play"' of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in mere "'recovery"' of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (225)
Hall's reflections articulate the complexity of Julius' identity, and the complexity of African diasporic identities in general. The African immigrant in the New African Diaspora does indeed have a “history,” similar to all culture, which is consistently elaborated on in Open City. However, it is not static nor essential. As Hall notes, history (the past) cannot merely be recovered and then regained, and used for eternity to acquire a sense of self. Identity and culture is ever changing, subject to a “'play' of history, culture and power.” This notion promotes a sense of lucidity within identity, and rejects a linear conception of time and space. This is reflected in Julius' character, in which he is consistently trying to negotiate older notions of identity with the newer ones. Time is also non-linear in the novel, as the reader receives multi-layered histories articulated in the present. Julius' character momentarily connects with other individuals of colour, however, he is still largely an outsider. His complex position as an African immigrant (that is mixed race), consistently in conflict with new and older notions of identity, give him an outsider perspective to the US. Even on a simplistic term, just by the very nature of him being an African immigrant, he is able to explore US society with a less subjective quality.
Julius' complex transatlantic composition of character also creates a sense of alienation for him. The schism of modernist and postmodern schools of thought in this context is presented as negative. Throughout the novel we experience Julius' alienation in various manifestations. Even through less explicit passages, there is an underlying sense of deep alienation for him. The passage below where Julius saves a boy from drowning reflects this sense of isolation:
there was laughter afterward, and the half-Indian boy was teased. But it might easily have been a tragic afternoon. What I hauled the short distance to the diving platform might have been a small, lifeless body. But almost all that day’s detail was soon lost to me, and what
remained most strongly was the sensation of being all alone in the water, that feeling of genuine isolation, as though I had been cast without preparation into some immense and not unpleasant, blue chamber, far from humanity. (196)
The passage reflects Julius' alienation, by expressing that he feels “far away from humanity.” Julius also remarks in the beginning of the novel about migrating geese and an international radio that he listens to that picks up channels from across Europe. The geese and the radio serve as metaphors for transatlantic alienation. The narration of Julius follows:
I turned the computer's speakers low and looked outside, nestled in the comfort provided by those voices, and it wasn't at all difficult to draw the comparison between myself, in my sparse apartment, and the radio host in his or her booth, during what must have been the middle of the night of the night somewhere in Europe. Those disembodied voices remain connected in my mind, even now, with the apparition of the migrating geese. (4-5)
This second passage expresses more explicitly the connection between Julius’ alienation with his transatlantic identity. This connection is illustrated by Julius drawing the comparison between himself and the “radio host in his or her booth,” followed by “those disembodied voices remain connected in my mind,” with the “apparition of the migrating geese.”
Julius is drawing connections between himself and the fragmented voices he hears on the international radio. In combination with the migrating geese, Cole creates a metaphor about
migration and transatlantic identity. Julius draws these connections in his mind while he is alone in his apartment, much like the radio host is alone in his/her booth. The radio seems like an apt
metaphor for migration, as this international radio is connecting Europe to the US. Furthermore, the geese serve as a visual metaphor, as they are quite literally migrating in the sky. The mutual
isolation of the radio host and Julius, compound this sense of transatlantic alienation.
Analysis of Novel
Chapter Four IV
Americanah
Similar to Open City, Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie's background plays a role in her fiction. The author is originally Nigerian (like Cole), however, she moved to the US to study at university. The author has a Masters in Creative Writing from John Hopkins University and a Masters in African Studies from Yale. Adichie proclaims to live in both Nigeria and the US. The novel Americanah appears to draw a great deal from Adichie's own life, but it is in fact fiction. Adichie has become increasing popular within the last decade because of her Ted Talks on feminism (“We Should All be Feminists”) and postcolonial issues (“The Dangers of A Single Story”). These talks combined with her award winning novel Americanah, have cast a spotlight on African literature, expressing a new type of African diasporic voice that transcends and
reformulates earlier ideological frameworks on “blackness” and the “diaspora” (constructed by Gilroy) for a more contemporary landscape. Adichie is interested in exploring identity, race and ethnicity for the African immigrant who migrates to the US and must wrestle with American conceptions of blackness. However, unlike Cole's Open City, Adichie's Americanah ends with the main protagonist Ifemelu finding ultimate self-realization in Nigeria and not America, expressing more of an affinity with rooted notions of identity. I will elaborate on this last point of analysis further in the essay.
In her Ted Talk she discusses her relationship with literature and her political motivations for the representations of Africans in literature. In her lecture, she states how as a young reader in Nigeria she was bombarded with English and American books. In light of this bombardment of Western literature, she did not realize at that age it was possible to write stories that included characters that reflected her specific reality. In the talk she notes:
what this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available, and they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books. (“Dangers of A Single Story”)
The authors elaborates with:
but because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of
chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are.
Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie is interested in representing a realistic and complex portrait of a part African culture and identity she is familiar with, attesting to the influence of Chinua Achebe. Achebe indeed fosters similar political values to Adichie regarding literature. In Achebe's essay “An Image of Africa” (1977), the author critiques Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness (1899), using it as a stepping stone to critique Western depictions of Africa and Africans in literature generally. He writes:
Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. (1790)
The passage expresses Achebe’s critique on the role of Africa in Western literature. The author comments that Africa is merely there to serve as a prop in Western literature. Achebe believes that by reducing Africa to a prop or “backdrop” in literature, it erases the humanity from the continent. Adichie, with the influence of Achebe and similar writers, also deals with issues of representation and racism in literature that concerns African identity. Adichie uses her literature politically to remedy contemporary issues of representation.
