Project

Migration and Hybridity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

Program

African Humanities Program Dissertation Fellowships

Department

Department of English and Literary Studies

Abstract

This study investigates in a postcolonial manner, the seeming absence of scholarship of a comparative nature on the link between migration and hybridity on three fronts: the regional front, migrant-status of individuals and gender. It does this using three texts: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid which represent the African, Asian and Caribbean regions, respectively. Using the interpretative-historical design with the postcolonial literary theory, the research explores hybridity’s relationship with migration in the texts to: ascertain the relationship between migration and hybridity and, allow for a comparison of the said relationship between and the effects of both phenomena on characters in different regions based on migrant-status, region and gender difference. Thus, it aims to demonstrate that migration and hybridity are shared experiences of all postcolonial individuals irrespective of region, gender and migrant-status.