Writing “so raw and true”: Blogging in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
Abstract
This essay aims at tracing the intersection between literary production and multimedia textuality in the case of postcolonial writing through an analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent novel Americanah (2013). Here the main character Ifemelu, after leaving her native Lagos to study in the US, becomes famous as a blogger on racial issues from the point of view of a non-American black. Starting from Sandra Ponzanesi’s The Postcolonial Cultural Industry, the analysis of the novel takes into account recent debates on the public role of postcolonial writers, as the blog reflects Adichie’s own role in contemporary media and situates the novel in the global landscape of Afropolitanism and its predicaments. Blog entries inhabit the novel from its early pages, and blogging intersects fiction and contaminates it with social commentary. With its interweaving of creative writing and opinion making, novel and blog, Americanah comments on the public role of the writer and its viral exposure, offering a poignant example of the mutation of narrative forms in the information age.Downloads
References
Adesanmi, Pius – Dunton, Chris, “Nigeria’s Third Generation Writing: Historiography and Preliminary Theoretical Considerations”, English in Africa, 32.1 (2005): 7–19.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, Americanah (2013), New York, Anchor Books, 2014.
Barber, John, “New novel Shows that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Gets the Race Thing”, The Globe and Mail, June 9, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/new-novel-shows-that-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-gets-the-race-thing/article12423909/, online (last accessed August 25, 2014).
Bosch Santana, Stephanie, “Exorcizing Afropolitanism: Binyavanga Wainaina explains why ‘I am a Pan-Africanist, not an Afropolitan’ at ASAUK 2012”, Africainwords (2013), http://africainwords.com/ 2013/02/08/exorcizing-afropolitanism-binyavanga-wainaina-explains-why-i-am-a-pan-africanist-not-an-afropolitan-at-asauk-2012, online (last accessed August 25, 2014).
Brouillette, Sarah, Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Calefato, Patrizia, The Clothed Body, Oxford, Berg, 2004.
Castells, Manuel, Communication Power, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
d’Abdon, Raphael, “Review of: J. Wawrizinek and J.K.S. Makokha, Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore“, Imbizo 2.1 (2011): 147-149.
Dalley, Hamish, “The Idea of ‘Third Generation Nigerian Literature’: Conceptualizing Historical Change and Territorial Affiliation in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel”, Research in African Literatures, 44.4 (Winter 2013): 15-34.
Dean, Joni, Blog Theory. Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010.
Gikandi, Simon, “Preface”, in Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore, Ed. Jennifer Wawrizinek and J.K.S. Makokha, Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2011: 9-12.
Griswold, Wendy, Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000.
Guarracino, Serena, “The Postcolonial Writer in Performance: J. M. Coetzee’s Summertime”, Alicante Journal of English Studies, 26 (2013): 101-112.
Hewett, Heather, “Coming of Age: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voice of the Third Generation”, English in Africa, 32.1, New Nigerian Writing (May 2005): 73-97.
Huggan, Graham, The Postcolonial Exotic. Marketing the Margins, New York: Routledge, 2001.
Makokha, J.K.S., “Introduction”, in Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore, Ed. Jennifer Wawrizinek and J.K.S. Makokha, Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2011: 13-22.
Mbaye, Ndeye Sene, “‘Ghana must go’ and ‘Americanah’: The Afropolitans Books Everyone is Talking About”, Under the Neem Tree, 2013, http://booksundertheneemtree.com/2013/05/03/ghana-must-go-and-americanah-the-afropolitans-books-everyone-is-talking-about/, online (last accessed August 8, 2014).
Mbembe, Achille, “What Is Postcolonial Thinking? Interview with Achille Mbembe”, Eurozine, 2008, http://www.eurozine.com/ articles/2008-01-09-mbembe-en.html, online (last accessed on August 25, 2014; first published in Esprit 12, 2006).
Open Society Foundations, Mapping Digital Media: Nigeria, New York, Open Society Foundations, 2012.
Ponzanesi, Sandra, The Postcolonial Cultural Industy. Icons, Markets, Mythologies, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Selasi, Talyie, “Bye Bye Barbar”, Lip Magazine (March 2005), http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76, online (last accessed August 26, 2014).
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1999.
Torkornoo, Edem, “When a Book Feels too Familiar: A Review of Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah”, Ayiba Magazine,http://issues.ayibamagazine.com/when-a-book-feels-too-familiar-a-review-of-chimamanda-adichies-americanah/, online (last accessed August 25, 2014).
Whitney, Joel, “A Mongrel Canon”, World Policy Journal, 27.3 (2010): 19-27.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
