Feminismo, cabelo diaspórico e dupla consciência em Americanah, de Chimamanda Adichie

Abstract

The object of study for the development of this research is Americanah, the most recent novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, starring student Ifemelu and her teenage boyfriend, Obinze. He tries life in England, but after some difficult situations, returns to his homeland and she moves to the United States, where she becomes a successful blogger and, through her posts, relates the hardships of immigrant life and, above all, of black woman, living experiences that make her reflect on the color of her skin, her hair and the fact of being a woman in a foreign country. The questions that guided this research were: what conclusions about feminist resistance and racial identity can we draw from the experiences with the characters' hair, especially Ifemelu? Based on the feminine discourses of the work, why, in hegemonic countries, some women need to submit to change, even rejecting their identity? How did the process of double consciousness of the character Ifemelu take place in its displacements, both of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, and how did your body respond to these movements? Faced with a work with such emergency and necessary themes, we aim to problematize the issue of hair in the narrative and its intersections as a tool of resistance and empowerment of black identity and feminism, both in the United States and Nigeria, as well as about how the body reacts to the diaspora and participates in the identity transformations of black women. Considering the postcolonial and decolonial issues, the approach we will use will be that of a bibliographic nature, which will consist of revisiting some authors who approach the concepts of double consciousness, diaspora and African feminism, in order to address the transformations that occurred in the body (specifically, in the hair), in the identity and consciousness due to the diasporic process suffered by the protagonist of the novel: Ifemelu. From this, we can perceive the importance of the empowerment of black women in various spheres of society, of the discussion about feminism that covers everyone (including men), seeking to deconstruct the standards that inferiorize women, such as the issue of hair, so that they feel free and well accepted in any spaces they occupy.