“I discovered race in America and it fascinated me”: Alienation, Exile and the Discovery of Cultures in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

IF 0.1 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI:10.22439/asca.v53i2.6393
Vahit Yaşayan
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Abstract

Depicting the economic and cultural problems facing its Nigerian immigrant protagonists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Americanah provides a great opportunity for its readers to understand the increasing appeal of the idea of cultures among immigrants in the West. It shows how the problems accompanying cultural dislocation compel even alienated individuals who previously idealized the West to embrace their cultures and move away from universal and individualistic perspectives such as liberalism. Cultural dislocation not only helps immigrants discover the importance and particularity of their own culture but also the continuing influence of cultures in the West. Further complicating the picture, however, the novel also reveals how the culture discovered by immigrants in exile is distinctly different from the culture lived and understood by their counterparts in their native country. By frankly depicting both the cultural problems facing African immigrants in a racialized America and the prevalence and negative effects of Eurocentric cultural alienation among non-Western youth, Americanah helps us understand the surprising turn to cultures and away from liberalism at the start of the twenty-first century.
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“我在美国发现了种族,它让我着迷”:在中国的异化、流放和文化发现
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie的小说《美国人》描述了尼日利亚移民主人公面临的经济和文化问题,为读者提供了一个很好的机会,让他们了解文化观念在西方移民中日益增长的吸引力。它展示了伴随文化错位而来的问题是如何迫使那些之前将西方理想化的被异化的个人接受他们的文化,并远离普遍和个人主义的观点,如自由主义。文化错位不仅帮助移民发现自己文化的重要性和特殊性,也帮助他们发现西方文化的持续影响。然而,更复杂的是,小说还揭示了流亡移民所发现的文化与他们在本国的同龄人所生活和理解的文化是如何截然不同的。通过坦率地描述非洲移民在一个种族化的美国所面临的文化问题,以及非西方青年中普遍存在的以欧洲为中心的文化异化及其负面影响,《美国人》帮助我们理解了21世纪初人们对文化和自由主义的惊人转向。
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来源期刊
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
8
期刊介绍: American Studies in Scandinavia, the journal of the Nordic Association for American Studies, is published twice each year, and carries scholarly articles and reviews on a wide range of American Studies topics and disciplines, including history, literature, politics, geography, media, language, diplomacy, race, ethnicity, economics, law, culture and society. American Studies in Scandinavia is sponsored by the National Councils for Research in Science and the Humanities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the journal is published by Odense University Press with the financial support of the Nordic Publications Committee for Humanist Periodicals.
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