4.5: "Language, Immigration, and Decolonization- An Exploration of the Linguistic Battleground in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Work" By Brynne Volpe

Language, Immigration, and Decolonization:

An Exploration of the Linguistic Battleground in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Work

By Brynne Volpe

Language is one of the most fundamental aspects of an individual’s identity. It has the power to carry both the voice of the individual as well as the voice and history of cultures. This is especially true within the context of ethnolinguistic groups, such as the three largest cultural groups within modern-day Nigeria – the Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. Additionally, language plays an integral role in the negotiation of cultural identity in the context of the immigrant experience. As a result of European colonization of the African continent, however, language has become a point of contention among various writers and scholars. In 1962, Makerere University College hosted a historic meeting of African writers. This conference, titled “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression,” set out to define what exactly African literature is and looks like. The late Chinua Achebe attended this conference just three years after the publication of Things Fall Apart and in 1965, he wrote “English and the African Writer” in response to this conference. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o also attended this conference, as an English student at Makerere, and his essay, “The Language of African Literature,” though published nearly two decades later, is a direct response to this conference and the ideas it brought up around language, colonization, and African literature. Ngũgĩ and Achebe thus come to represent two opposing approaches to English within the postcolonial context of African nations and identity. On the one hand, Achebe maintains that English is, as a result of colonization, a language that African writers have at their disposal; African writers should not be attacked for choosing to write in English as they are existing within and responding to the cultural ramifications of the project of European colonization. On the other hand, Ngũgĩ maintains that African literature should be written in African languages so as to reclaim the culture and sense of identity that was lost as a result of English being forced upon the continent during colonization. Taking both of these perspectives into account, the contemporary Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, through her characters of Ifemelu and Afamefuna, is able to strike a balance between Ngũgĩ’s and Achebe’s understandings of how language is and should be used within African literatures. Her fiction, thus, presents language as a means through which the struggles of immigration and decolonization can be understood as interconnected on both the personal and the cultural scales.

Chinua Achebe is widely accepted as one of the fathers of Nigerian literature. His novel, Things Fall Apart, is a foundational text across literary canon and has been taught around the world for decades since its publication. Through the perspective of the novel’s Igbo protagonist, Okonkwo, Things Fall Apart examines the various ways in which European missionaries sought to colonize the African continent as a whole. As a result of the way in which Achebe is able to illustrate the effects of colonization on the individual, Things Fall Apart is often understood as the great Nigerian work of literature and the definitive narrative of Nigeria as a nation. Thanks to this, Achebe is also often turned to when discussing what language African literature should be written in. In his article, “English and the African Writer,” Achebe maintains that “the national literature of Nigeria and of many other countries of Africa is, or will be, written in English” (Achebe 344). Achebe goes on to explain that while this statement may sound controversial upon first hearing it, it is rather as a result of the European colonization of the African continent that English has largely become the language of Nigerian literature. As a result, Achebe explains that “Those African writers who have chosen to write in English or French are not unpatriotic smart alecs, with an eye on the main chance outside their countries. They are by-products of the same processes that made the new nation-states of Africa” (Achebe 344). That is, African writers who choose not to write in African languages should not be understood as appealing to the marketplace and readership of the Western world – as sellouts – but as the products of the systems under which they were raised. African writers who write in English or French are the result of the same system of colonization that has fundamentally and irrevocably shaped and altered the cultures of the continent, and writing in English calls attention to this violence.

In developing this understanding of English as the language of the national literature of many African countries, Achebe goes on to explain that English can be harnessed in a specifically African manner when utilized by African writers. Achebe emphasizes that English can be used and manipulated by the African writer in ways that both brings out their messages and maintains English as a “medium of international exchange” (Achebe 347). That is, the African writer can fashion “an English that is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience” (Achebe 347). Achebe recognizes English as the product of colonization, and in this recognition, he comes to the understanding that English can be used to the African writer’s advantage. English is simply a fact of life in many postcolonial African nation states and as a result, African writers should be allowed to embrace this fact and use English to tell their stories in a uniquely African manner.

In direct response to Achebe, Ngũgĩ takes the stance that African literature should be written in African languages. In his text, “The Language of African Literature,” Ngũgĩ begins explaining his argument by pushing his readers to acknowledge that “the language of African literature cannot be discussed meaningfully outside the context of those social forces which have made it both an issue demanding our attention and a problem calling for resolution” (Ngũgĩ 4). English is the official language in so many African countries only as a direct result of European colonization. Language is one of the most fundamental aspects of any personal identity, and more importantly, any culture, and because of this fundamental aspect of language, “the domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised” (Ngũgĩ 16). As a result, Ngũgĩ’s belief that African literatures should be written in African languages is one that reflects the project, and the struggle, of intentional decolonization. Ngũgĩ succinctly, and quite powerfully, asks the question: “What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?” (Ngũgĩ 26). This query directly refutes Achebe’s understanding and subsequent endorsement of English as a language of African literature. Instead, Ngũgĩ takes the stance that English is the language of the colonizer and should be treated as such – and actively resisted in decolonial efforts.

Ngũgĩ explains his own experience in school where English became “the measure of intelligence and ability” and therefore “the main determinant of a child’s progress up the ladder of formal education” (Ngũgĩ 12). This reliance on English as a standard for measuring both intelligence and educational success is what is at the core of Ngũgĩ’s issue with English being used for African literatures. Instead of English being one of many various languages used throughout the continent, the ethnic languages of Africa were systematically suppressed while English was elevated. As a result of this systematic elevation of English, the ethnic languages of Africa have, historically, been understood as fundamentally inferior to English. By adopting this stance on African literature being written in African languages, Ngũgĩ is able to reclaim the identity and culture transmitted through African languages while also taking a decidedly anticolonial stance on language itself.

English as the language of colonization is a concept that is highlighted throughout Adichie’s fiction and something that is constantly being negotiated by her characters. When turning to Adichie and her work more generally, it is clear that Adichie is following in the footsteps of Achebe, her literary predecessor. Adichie writes English-language texts and intersperses Igbo words, phrases, and statements in ways that make it clear Adichie is “keenly aware of the colonial legacies of English” (Esplin 76). That is, Adichie is aware that English is the language that was introduced – and forced upon – modern-day Nigeria as a direct result of colonization. However, where Adichie differs from Ngũgĩ in this acknowledgement and understanding of English as the language of the colonizer is in her explanation: “it was important for me to have the Igbo bits in the book because I wanted to try and capture the reality of characters who were constantly straddling two languages” (Esplin 76-7). Because Nigeria exists as a postcolonial nation state, it must constantly navigate the linguistic ramifications of colonization. English is the official language of Nigeria, and many people grow up speaking English and ethnic languages, and by making space for both English and Igbo in her prose, Adichie is able to highlight the experience of straddling two languages – the colonizing language and the colonized language.

This combination of languages can be understood through the lens of the term, “diglossia.” Diglossia, within the context of Adichie’s writing, is the “practice of introducing words and phrases from Igbo into predominantly English-language narration” (Ross 113). As a result, Adichie’s interspersing of Igbo throughout her texts allows readers to absorb Igbo into their “working vocabulary” (Ross 115). Due to the ways in which Adichie is able to integrate Igbo into the linguistic fabric of her works, she is able to create a space where readers are brought into the cultural fold. Readers are at the same time building up their reading vocabulary of Igbo, largely through context, and are constantly reminded of the complicated, colonial history of these two languages and their relationships to one another. Adichie complicates Ngũgĩ’s notion that English is the language of the colonizer and that using African languages is the only decolonizing way to tell African stories. Instead, Adichie is able to create an argument through her writing that presents English as both an indicator of colonization – and thus a form of linguistic oppression – and a mode of rebellion with a similar decolonizing potential as Igbo.

In turning to Adichie’s short story, “The Headstrong Historian,” it is clear that this work is in conversation with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. However, Adichie’s approach in this conversation is one that challenges Achebe’s silencing of Igbo women. Things Fall Apart is first, and foremost, a story about Okonkwo, Achebe’s male protagonist. As a result, the women in the novel are left in the periphery and largely silent. At the heart of Adichie’s approach in “The Headstrong Historian” is the fact that Adichie, herself, is a woman writer and that “the narratives told by men and women are distinct, even divergent” (Ejikeme 310). Gender, and the experiences of the author, is integral to understanding the ways in which these two stories of Igbo history diverge from one another. In Things Fall Apart, it is “easy to cast [women] as subordinated, or even oppressed,” but in “The Headstrong Historian,” where women are the central characters – from Nwamgba to Afamefuna – “it is the embrace of Christianity and the new ideas about marriage brought by the Christian missionaries which erodes the powers and options of women” (Ejikeme 319). This difference highlights Adichie’s understanding of the ways in which women are oppressed in a patriarchal society as well as the ways in which her own feminism plays a role in how she conceptualizes characters. As a result, “Adichie’s exploration of the interconnectedness of Christianity and patriarchy both reflects and revises Things Fall Apart” (Hewett 80). It is nearly impossible to unravel the ways in which Christianity, patriarchy, and colonization are woven together and have fundamentally changed present-day Nigeria. In the end, Adichie pushes readers to acknowledge that Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is not the singular, definitive story of Nigeria.

With this understanding of “The Headstrong Historian” as a response to Achebe and Things Fall Apart, it becomes clear that this story is one that highlights the project of decolonization. Nwamgba, the main character of this short story, and the family matriarch, largely refuses to abandon her traditional beliefs and language in the way that her son, Anikwenwa, does. When Nwambga’s granddaughter, Anikwenwa’s child, is born, “Father O’Donnell baptized her Grace, but Nwamgba called her Afamefuna, ‘My Name Will Not Be Lost’” (Adichie 214). Just a line before, Adichie writes, “from the moment Nwamgba held her, the baby’s bright eyes delightfully focused on her, she knew that it was the spirit of Obierika that had returned” (Adichie 214). Obierika was Nwamgba’s husband, and he died before the Christian missionaries began their work of colonization. As a result, Obierika comes to represent a pre-colonial Nigeria that becomes harder and harder for Nwamgba to reach as she moves through her life after his passing. What Nwamgba sees in her granddaughter, Afamefuna, is not only the spirit of her late husband, but also the spirit of pre-colonial Nigeria. Afamefuna, herself, comes to represent the possibilities of intentional decolonization in a way that highlights both the struggles of that endeavor as well as the reclamation of culture that can result.

While Afamefuna’s name indicates the possibility of decolonization early on, her trajectory is one that exemplifies the struggles of such a project. When Nwamgba is dying, and Afamefuna, who at this point in the story still goes by Grace, returns home to her grandmother, the book that she has with her in her school bag is an English history book. It contains a chapter titled, “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of Southern Nigeria,” written “by an administrator from Worcestershire who had lived among them for seven years” (Adichie 215). At this point, Grace is experiencing education in a fashion that is reminiscent of what Ngũgĩ experiences – the elevation of the English language and the stories, cultures, and ideals that are transmitted through it. It is not until Grace has changed her major at university to history and is “shifting through moldy files in archives for the book she would write called Pacifying with Bullets: A Reclaimed History of Southern Nigeria,” that she begins the work of intentional decolonization (Adichie 217). However, with the inclusion of this arguably small point regarding the title of her book, Adichie is able to show just how completely Grace transforms her conception of both her educational experiences and her culture. Interestingly, the title of her book is one that is reminiscent of Ngũgĩ’s explanation that “the bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of spiritual subjugation” (Ngũgĩ 9). In this quotation, Ngũgĩ emphasizes the ways in which language is used as a form of colonization that subjugates the mind. That is, when the language of the colonizer is forced upon others, it separates the individual from their community, and in the case of the colonization of Africa, it separates the individual from their ethnolinguistic groups.

This loss of connection is one that Adichie explores further when Grace reclaims her name itself. Adichie explains that “it was Grace who, feeling an odd rootlessness in the later years of her life, surrounded by her awards, her friends, her garden of peerless roses, would go to the courthouse in Lagos and officially change her first name from Grace to Afamefuna” (Adichie 218). Afamefuna is the name her grandmother gave her – the name that only her grandmother called her. In describing the “odd rootlessness” Grace was feeling in her life even though she had accomplished so much and was surrounded by the people and things she loved, Adichie is able to highlight the experience of being linguistically disconnected from a community. With Nwamgba gone, Grace has no connection to pre-colonial Igbo culture. In changing her name from Grace – her English, Christian name – to Afamefuna – the name her grandmother gave her – she is able to reclaim a small part of her collective history as a southern Nigerian. Layered upon this is the fact that Afamefuna means “My Name Will Not Be Lost” (Adichie 214). In the end, Obierika and all that he came to represent within “The Headstrong Historian” does return through the granddaughter he never met and the life she carved out for herself. Afamefuna engages with her history and does the work of decolonization, even in this small act of realigning her identity with that of Nwamgba and Obierika.

While Adichie’s novel, Americanah, is primarily concerned with immigration, Ifemelu’s experience with the linguistic negotiations that accompany immigrant experiences is one that reflects the feeling of rootlessness that Afamefuna describes prior to reclaiming her name. Early on in the novel, Adichie explains an episode where Ifemelu is commended on her ability to “sound American” – the subtext being that non-immigrant Americans are surprised when non-Americans speak English without an accent (Adichie 215). Adichie explains that Ifemelu “had won, indeed, but her triumph was full of air. Her fleeting victory had left in its wake a vast, echoing space, because she had taken on, for too long, a pitch of voice and a way of being that was not hers (Adichie 215-6). Ifemelu’s experiences as an immigrant in the United States led her to understand that complete assimilation was both expected and required if she were to be taken seriously. However, in assimilating, Ifemelu had lost a part of herself – she had taken on a way of being “that was not hers.” In crafting an outward expression of self that would be respected, Ifemelu had alienated herself from one of the most fundamental parts of her identity – her linguistic connection to Nigeria. Adichie goes on to explain that it was only after she had accepted the praise for sounding American that “she [began] to feel the stain of a burgeoning shame spreading all over her” (Adichie 215). Even though Ifemelu has been able to manipulate linguistic expectations to work for her, not against her, in removing herself from her experience of language, Ifemelu was wholly disconnected from Nigeria. English is the official language of Nigeria, but because Ifemelu speaks English with a non-American accent, she is not taken seriously. However, in choosing to take on an American accent and use of English, more generally, Ifemelu inadvertently isolated herself to a level that she was not able to recognize until she was forced to question why it was an accomplishment to sound American in the first place.

Ifemelu’s own linguistic alienation is fully realized when she experiences a severe period of depression. However, as a result of her own limited understanding of mental health, Ifemelu does not believe that she can be depressed: “Depression was what happened to Americans, with their self-absolving need to turn everything into an illness. She was not suffering from depression; she was merely a little tired and a little slow” (Adichie 194). Precisely because of her immigrant experience, Ifemelu is unable to acknowledge the fact that she is suffering. For Ifemelu, depression is a specifically American problem because of the American “self-absolving need to turn everything into an illness.” Ifemelu is not physically ill, and as a result, she does not see a need to see a doctor for something that, according to her view of things, does not occur in the first place. On top of this, “Ifemelu’s bout of depression closely aligns with the extent to which she alienates herself linguistically” (Esplin 80). When Ifemelu is at the height of working to completely assimilate herself into American society and culture she is also at her most isolated. Assimilation strips the individual of any and all connection to their culture of origin and maintains that disconnection, at least for Ifemelu, through linguistic expectations. Ifemelu is expected to lose her accent and to speak entirely in English, and it is in doing this that she is completely and utterly lost and alone, which manifested through her experience of depression.

However, when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria thirteen years later, she does not quite fit in with Nigerian society. Ifemelu’s time in the United States changed her and her experiences as an immigrant in a place that demands assimilation fundamentally shaped her. After her return to Nigeria, the term Americanah – also the title of the work, meaning someone who has been Americanized – is introduced and used in reference to Ifemelu. However, as Ifemelu’s friend Ranyinudo points out, “the problem is that you are not even a real Americanah. At least if you had an American accent we would tolerate your complaining!” (Adichie 475-6). Ifemelu, because of the ways in which she has both encountered and navigated language as an immigrant in the United States, does not have an American accent like many other returnees; she consciously maintained her Nigerian English. She tried full assimilation. She tried changing that part of her identity, and in the end, it left her with an “echoing space” and a “shame” that she was forced to confront (Adichie 215-6). Even though she was able to keep that connection to Nigeria while she was in the United States, once she returned to Nigeria it was something that separated her from others who had also spent time abroad and eventually returned. As a result, this disconnection even from Nigeria, the place she had worked so hard to preserve a linguistic connection to, “offers a revealing glimpse into the ways in which [Ifemelu’s] diasporic experience has altered her relationship with her country of origin” (Tunca and Ledent 3). Ifemelu’s experiences highlight the ways in which diaspora can change a person. Ifemelu’s fundamental tie to her country of origin, Nigeria, was one based around the way she used language while in the United States. Ifemelu never completely stopped using Igbo, and she deliberately chose to keep her Igbo-accented English. It helped her to maintain her connection to Nigeria, but because she never fully assimilated to the United States, like so many other expatriates do, Ifemelu does not have similar experiences to those who have returned to Nigeria like her. Instead, her accent becomes yet another way in which she is disconnected, even from her home country, just as she was in the United States.

As a result, it becomes clear that through these two characters – Afamefuna and Ifemelu – Adichie has been able to incorporate aspects of both Achebe’s case and Ngũgĩ’s case for the different ways of representing African stories. Adichie, as an author, complicates both of these foundational arguments and pushes her readers to see these complexities for themselves. The modern-day experiences of postcolonial Nigeria have been fundamentally impacted by European colonization and it is impossible to ignore the fact that English is a part of that experience. As Adichie highlights, her characters straddle languages and are constantly asked to negotiate their own linguistic experiences whether it be as an immigrant, an Americanah, or a member of the new, postcolonial generation of young people. What these characters show is that it is not as simple as merely choosing one language over the other – the colonized, ethnic language over the colonizing, European language. Adichie’s own use of diglossia forces readers to experience this alongside her characters and ultimately finds a point of balance along the spectrum of linguistic understanding that is created through both Achebe and Ngũgĩ.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “English and the African Writer.” Transition, no. 75/76, 1997, p. 342-349, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935429.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Anchor Books, 2013.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozie. “The Headstrong Historian.” The Thing Around Your Neck. Anchor Books, 2009.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. “The Language of African Literature.” Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. James Currey, 1986.

Ejikeme, Anene. “The Women of Things Fall Apart, Speaking from a Different Perspective: Chimamanda Adichie’s Headstrong Storytellers.” Meridians, vol. 15, no. 2, 2017, p. 307-29, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 10.2979/meridians.15.2.02.

Esplin, Marlene. “The Right Not to Translate: The Linguistic Stakes of Immigration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 49, no. 2, 2018, pp. 73–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.2.05

Hewett, Heather. “Coming of Age: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voice of the Third Generation.” English in Africa, vol. 32, no. 1, 2005, pp. 73–97. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40239030.

Ross, Michael L. “Ownership of Language: Diglossia in the Fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, pp. 111–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/reseafrilite.50.1.07.

Tunca, Daria and Bénédicte Ledent. "The Power of a Singular Story: Narrating Africa and Its Diasporas." Research in African Literatures, vol. 46 no. 4, 2015, p. 1-9. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/602735.