‘Sometimes Race Is Class’: A Comparative Analysis of Sense of Self in Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

Abstract

Sense of self is a person’s identity, individuality and consciousness. This study explores the constructs (race and class) that compel African immigrants to reconstruct their sense of self in Euro-American cultural spaces, focusing on the works of Buchi Emecheta and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Drawing on key concepts in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks as a theoretical lens, the study adopted textual analysis and close reading and contextual analysis to unearth how one’s sense of self is constructed in Emechata’s Second-Class Citizen and Adichie’s Americanah. After considering the implications of the generational gap between Emechata and Adichie as second and third-generation writers, it stands to reason that African immigrant women writers use writing as a tool to tell their experiences of transnational migration and condemn racial and class inequality in Euro-American cultural spaces. Thus far, the diasporic experience described in both texts is a never-ending journey. Although travelling overseas is an intersectional experience that enables African immigrants to break away from the challenges they face in their communities, these experiences, I argue, induce them to reconstruct their sense of self to adjust to the conditions in Euro-American cultural spaces.