Interrogating Diasporic Conditions

A Critical Study of Select Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Abstract

This paper examines the complexities of diasporic conditions in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003), The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and Americanah (2013), with particular attention to how displacement shapes identity, memory, and lived experience. It investigates the interplay between longing for home, nostalgia, and emotional dislocation, highlighting how characters navigate the tension between past and present, and how exile functions as a paradoxical state of both survival and dispossession. Grounded in postcolonial theory, the study draws on Said’s theorization of exile and Hall’s articulation of cultural identity to interrogate the psychological, social, and political dimensions of migration. Findings reveal that domestic rituals, sensory memories, and language mediate the experience of nostalgia, producing fragmented identities shaped by historical and cultural legacies. Memory operates simultaneously as rupture and resistance, enabling characters to reconstruct selfhood through reflection, silence, and imaginative engagement with the past. Displacement is shown to generate persistent psychological exile, as exemplified by forced and voluntary migrations that result in marginalization, emotional fragmentation, and alienation. Characters confront systemic barriers, gendered oppression, and racial hierarchies, which amplify the paradoxical burdens of migration and the disjunction between homeland and hostland. Through these narratives, Adichie portrays diaspora not as linear movement but as a recursive and multifaceted condition marked by loss, longing, invisibility, and uneven belonging.