Writing for Change: A Narratological Approach to Repositioning Afropolitan Discourses in Adichie’s Americanah, Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Selasi’s Ghana Must Go

Abstract

This thesis argues the often-unheard narratives represented in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi are urgent to the circulation of world literature. Their fiction demonstrates how novels can be meaningful aesthetic encounters to address the residual powerlessness concerning contemporary Black living. I first discuss why Afropolitanism functions as a fitting neologism for this thesis in the Theoretical Framework, while also selecting theories from narratological studies in order to do my analysis concerning these novels. In the second chapter I explore how Adichie’s Americanah imparts emotional empathy and productive unease concerning the humanity of the Afropolitan experience. Chapter three revolves around how Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other resists easy binary categorisations and confronts readers with prevailing racial stereotypes and pertinent issues. Lastly, the chapter on Selasi’s Ghana Must Go discusses how the narrative offers the reader a more empathic relation with the Afropolitan experience. These chapters all demonstrate how these works of fiction offer the reader to engage with the painful dynamics of contemporary racism and what literary narratives can do to address these pertaining problematics.