An Intersectional Reading of Contemporary Women’s Narratives: Gendered Migration and Diasporic Identity.

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to explore how female migrant protagonists in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko experience dislocation and self-identity in relation to migration. Using Homi K. Bhabha’s hybridisation theory; Avtar Brah’s concept of diaspora space; Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality; and postcolonial feminism, the study discusses how migration results in fragmented, but dynamic, Identity formations of female migrants in transnational contexts. Using characters like Ifemelu, Alma Rivera, and Sunja as examples of female migrants who form resistant and self-defined spaces through their experiences but also experience marginalisation due to multiple systems of oppression, the Analysis highlights how diasporic identities are hybrid, relational, and changing. Additionally, the narratives illustrate how diasporic identity can oppose Mono-causal paradigms of assimilation, and redefine the notion of diasporic Space as a site of Negotiation, Resilience, and Gendered Metamorphosis.