A Critical Discourse on Self Discovery in Alice Walker’s Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1405.01Keywords:
feminism, racism, segregation, diasporas and women, self-discoveryAbstract
Alice Walker and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are renowned female writers from different backgrounds, countries and as such, different ideologies. They share a lot in common as their novels revolve around women, their struggles, challenges and experiences in life. Alice Walker concentrates on African-American women while Adichie focuses on the experiences of Africans, especially women who left the shores of Africa to the western world, their struggles, challenges encountered for being black and being a woman which Bell Hooks regards as “double tragedy”. This study is a comparative analysis of the self discovery in their novels: Now is the time to open your Heart by Alice Walker and Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie. It examines how the female protagonists: Kate and Ifemelu re-discover themselves and carve out a niche for themselves despite the challenges they face in their various journey in life. This study attempts to disabuse the minds of those who believe that women should be regarded as objects to be played with; rather they are subjects as could be ascertained from the lives of the characters, especially, the protagonists. Effort will be made to examine their pitiable experience which ranges from racism, segregation, humiliation and exploitation. Womanist and Post-colonial theories have been employed in this study to ostensibly facilitate a link between the experiences of Africans in Diaspora and the American system of government.
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