MIGRANT MELANCHOLIA IN BY THE SEA AND AMERICANAH: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

This research examines melancholia and disidentifications in the Postcolonial migrants live in Abdul Razak Gurnah’s By the Sea (2001) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013). The theoretical underpinning of this study is based on Paul Gilroy’s Post-Colonial Melancholia (2013) and José Esteban Muñoz Disidentifications (1999). The research negotiates the ways both authors have weaved the layers of deep anguish from betrayal, colonial history and exile in the struggle of Saleh Omar to secure asylum. In the First Primary text By the Sea, Omar’s Silence before the immigration officers transform his melancholia from individual to political when coupled with the history of empire. In the second Primary text Americanah, Ifemelu’s blogs writing are the examples of ironic explanation for the American racial structure that neither submit to the rules nor denies them but transforms them into a subject of resistance rather self-governing. This research is a significant and original contribution to the existing studies in Postcolonial American and African literature particularly focusing on exile, race and hybridity in both of the primary texts. It further addresses the gap in colonization and melancholy ethnography that explores disidentifications and exile without the lens of melancholia. The main argument of this research is that the migrant experience is framed not only by loss but by the creative ways of enduring such loss.