32nd Annual Student Research Conference
Where Salih meets Adichie: The Postcolonial Goth in Contemporary African Literature
Aderinsola O. Adesida
Dr. Hena Ahmad, Faculty Mentor
Chimamanda Adichie and Tayeb Salih, in their novels Americanah (2013) and Season of Migration to the North (1966), respectively, depict young African intellectuals confronting their countries' colonial past as they try to assimilate into Western societies. Written four decades apart, and notwithstanding the two writers' different origins, genders, religions and cultures, both novels depict the ways in which their protagonists renegotiate their African identities. Situating my paper within the postcolonial goth framework, I will explore how the protagonists, seeing themselves as "other", complicated by the fact that both express themselves within the language, the cultural references, and the literary forms and figures of their colonial legacy, return to their homelands with no straightforward resolution of their identities after the colonial encounter.
Keywords: African studies, Postcolonial, Goth, Imperialism, Chimamanda Adichie, Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, Americanah
Topic(s):English
African Studies
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 306-2
Location: BH 251
Time: 1:45