The Danger of a Single Chronotope Modern African Diaspora and Blogging Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah

Abstract

In The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy popularized the ship as a salient chronotope for examining the Black diasporic transnational alliances across the Middle Passage because ships sailing across the Atlantic metonymically represented Pan-Africanism and transcultural relations in the writings of intellectual activists like W. E. B. Du Bois. Jettisoning the clichéd chronotope of the ship and portraying the alternative chronotope of the airport as a space that restricts mobility for Black diasporic subjects, this article argues that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah represents the unique chronotope of the hair salon as a spatiotemporal organizer of the narrative depicting the diverse lived experiences of the new Black diaspora. Close reading to demonstrate how Adichie’s experimental aesthetics augments extant theoretical models of the Black diaspora (e.g., Brent Edwards’s Décalage), the article concludes by proffering that Ifemelu’s blog posts challenge the claims of The Black Atlantic, which are supported by a framework that Michelle Wright describes as the “Middle Passage Epistemology.”