The experience of return in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's

Abstract

This article examines Ifemelu's experience of return in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah" in order to expand upon Esperança Bielsa's contention that the "cosmopolitan stranger" is also embodied by certain postcolonial diasporic subjects. Bielsa refers specifically to those returnees who become agents in the transformation of their societies of origin. Under this premise, the literary analysis focuses first on Ifemelu's emotional attitude toward a homecoming while she is in diaspora, in the US, and then moves on to explore her experience of dislocation upon return in Lagos. This leads to the identification of the figure of the stranger as returnee. The final part of the analysis examines Ifemelu's process of readjustment in the place of origin, paying attention to her critical ways of thinking and acting as, more accurately, a cosmopolitan stranger. This article underlines, however, a major shortcoming of Bielsa's discussion in light of studies of nostalgia -the lack of consideration of the future-oriented dimension of this emotion. Ifemelu's homecoming shows that a feeling of nostalgia in the context of migration may result in a decision to return home as a defensive reaction to the experience of racialization, which in turn may be put to work toward cosmopolitan social change in the homeland.