On the Familiar and the Unfamiliar in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

What is it about?

This essay asks what a comfort read might be when it involves fiction that deals with migrant states of liminality. If a comfort read is seen as a retreat from the stressors of the world into the space of the familiar, then how can we situate 'the familiar' in fiction that problematizes this notion? This essay argues that, in Adichie’s Americanah, the familiar is not a space of comfort, but an identification with a particular approach to problems. I suggest that ‘going back’ to a favorite novel is not necessarily a retreat from the world, but a way to re-enter it through the configuration of mitigations and resolutions to the problems posed in the fiction.

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Photo by Anton Luzhkovsky on Unsplash

Photo by Anton Luzhkovsky on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This essay challenges the commonplace notion of reading familiar fiction for comfort and suggests a way to rethink the function of a favorite novel. The familiar is conceived not as a comforting space of retreat but as a functional component of engagement in the world. The content will be of interest to readers in contemporary American literature and postcolonial literature, especially on the topics of identity, transnationalism, and migration.