Social And Economic Class In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Novel Americanah

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, African American social reformers started to compare the struggles against caste oppression and racial injustice in the United States. Most of these reformers failed to take into account what was lost when intricate details of hierarchy, position, and identity were first translated into the words “race” and “caste"”and then back again. While analysing such double translation restrictions, this paper contends that racial and caste parallels had been extensively used in opposition to white supremacy, caste oppression, and other types of injustice. Although Americanah is a novel about a group of characters, it also includes a thorough examination and critique of racism in America, England, and Nigeria, as well as Adichie’s astute observations scattered throughout. Ifemelu disagrees that she is a black person in Nigeria. There is still a racial hierarchy in Nigerian society.