Interracial relationships and the migrant’s identity conflicts in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Daniel Biyaoula’s L’impasse

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing one of the key elements that take a heavy toll on the migrant’s identity consciousness and adaptation, namely interracial relationships. This research investigates the role of these cross-cultural relations in the migrant’s identity negotiation. Although the African migrant intends this form of relationship to help him/her integrate in host land, it rather deepens the migrant’s sense of alienation and estrangement. This paper upholds the argument that differences in the perception of racial prejudices foster the African immigrant’s frustration in the West and cause him/her to envisage return to race-free relationships in native land as a solution to racial biases. The migrant therefore experiences various forms of exclusion abroad; seeks the refuge of an interracial relationship to protect him/herself from the violence of racism; and is disillusioned by this relationship to the extent of returning home to reconstruct his/her identity. This research uses the comparative method to underscore zones of (dis)similarity between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Daniel Biyaoula’s L’impasse as regards their depiction of interracial relationships. Psychoanalytic criticism and Frantz Fanon’s ideas are employed in this paper to show how unconscious desires, complexes and stereotypes trump interracial unions. This research arrives at the conclusion that the shadow of Euro-centricism and the myth of white superiority loom on interracial relationships (sometimes unconsciously) and enact the ‘impossibility’ of these relationships.