WE ALL BELONG TO EACH OTHER: MIGRATION AND CONNECTION IN ADICHIE AND NGUYEN

Viet Than Nguyen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are among the most critical social commentators of the 21st century, using fiction as a means to critique social issues and policies, particularly those concerned with human connection and migration. Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah explores connection and relationships through the experience of racism and Nguyen’s 2017 debut collection of short stories The Refugees powerfully personifies the migrant facing hardships and finding dreams in a new country. By questioning the American Dream and the polarizing issues of migration and race, especially to the reading public, Nguyen and Adichie bring ideas of moral and social thought reform to the 21st century reader.  There is ethical and political potential of literature, and the novel is a repository of social conscience. Unsurprisingly, Americanah and The Refugees pull readers into a global conversation surrounding migration, astigmatism, and racism.  Americanah’s Ifemelu leaves a militarized and oppressed Nigeria to fulfill her dream of intellectual success in America, learning to grapple with a new identity in a free country: black. Ifemelu makes the decision to be at home with herself, which is accented, braided, and proud of her identity as a Non-American Black. Similarly, The Refugees collection of short stories expose the consequences of a disconnected society for the individual. In the short-story, The Transplant, Mexican-American Arthur Arellano receives a new liver from a Vietnamese refugee. Arther is all too disconnected and suffers more than a failed liver. He also fails to sort out the identification of his donor--lumping Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese into one kind of human: Asian. Nguyen expresses to the reader that we all belong to each other, and when one is lost, all of us is lost. There is no sacrifice of the one, but sacrifice of the whole when one part is lost or diminished.  This recognizability of personhood, in which American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler theorizes that ‘human beings often apprehend, or indeed fail to apprehend the lives of others,’  is expressed by these two writers (Howes, D.E. 2010 pp. 7). Adichie and Nguyan are 21st-century authors whose literature should be a catalyst for social and moral change in America.  Adichie and Nguyen succeed in giving voice to the migrant and refugee struggling to belong and find home in a fractured world.

Adichie awakens the moral conscience of the reader and deals with race and belonging.  Her novel, Americanah, thematically surrounds characters who leave home seeking a better life, and they move to other parts of Nigeria, to Europe, or to the United States. Nigerian-born heroine, Ifemelu, has found a better life. In the present, she holds a fellowship at Princeton and has found the absolute love of her life with the man she is dating, a black American named Blaine, who teaches at Yale. Despite her success in academia, Ifemelu holds resentment for everyday issues. Ifemelu writes a blog about identity hybridity and racial issues to expose more than discontent; she exposes reality. It is called “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black” (Adichie, 2014 pp. 360). Having found the freedom to share her voice, Ifemelu is unafraid to take on taboo subjects.  She blogs, “So what’s the deal? They tell us race is an invention, that there is more genetic variation...is race an invention or not?” (Aichie, 2014 pp. 364). Adichie flashes readers back to Ifemelu, a young girl in love with childhood crush Obinze, who made plans to leave Nigeria for a better life in America. Migrating to the land of dreams, Ifemelu grapples with a new identity and a place in the world. Her new perceived identity and connection to the human race shifts. She hungers to understand everything about America, “to wear a new, knowing skin right away” (Adichie, 2014 pp. 166). Ifemelu struggles against poverty, taking any job beside near prostitution, and is able to grasp a version of the American Dream. She reads about America’s mythologies, America’s tribalisms--race, ideology, and region--it all became clear (Adichie, 2014 pp. 167). In Ifemelu’s experience of American culture, especially after registering for classes at Princeton, she drops her accent out of shame to better assimilate into the culture she is in. Ifemelu experiences the politics of language and the demand for complete assimilation down to the level of speech intonation. 

“Yes. Now. Are. You. An. International. Student?” 

“Yes.” 

“You. Will. First. Need. To. Get. A. Letter. From. The. International. Students. Office…. I. Need. You. To. Fill. Out. A. Couple. Of. Forms. Do. You. Understand. How. To. Fill. These. Out?” (Adichie, 2014 pp. 136). 

In one exchange, the registrar changes the tempo of speech to match the stereotypical view of migrants struggling to speak English well in the United States. The scene points to the limits of cultural hybridity and assimilation (Taylor, 2019, pp. 68).  When in search of employment, Ifemelu counters judgement for her unconventional professional appearance. “If you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional’' she is told (Adichie, 2014 pp. 146). She travels to a salon for hair braiding, despite the unpopularity and distance for the style. In the last effort to belong, she refers to herself as a Non-American Black. Using her blog to battle injustice, Ifemelu realizes she searches for connection beyond a distinct label.  Ifemelu searches for personhood. While at first she ignores blatant astigmatisms, Ifemelu later challenges the commonly held belief that when “you are in a country that is not your own, you do what you have to do if you want to succeed” (Adichie, 2014, pp. 146). Grappling still with identity, Ifemelu makes the decision to be at home with herself: accented, braided, and proud of a strong Nigerian background. Literary scholar Ava Landry observes of people similar to Ifemelu, “African immigrants arrive to the United States with a variety of different cultural heritages and identities, but they must deal with Blackness as a master status, or as their most salient social identity, in ways that are new, complex, and foreign” (Landry, 2018 pp. 127). Supporting Landry’s observation, other scholars like Jack Taylor offer added insight--cultural hybridity is founded on a break between cultural practices, not a smooth reconciliation of them (Taylor, 2019 pp. 80). Adichie suggests that a sacrifice of identity or compromise of self is expected when migrating to a new country, but interrupts this perception with a heroine like Ifemelu who chooses to embrace her hybrid identity and fight for recognition of personhood found in America’s prided philosophy of individuality. 

Similarly, Viet Thanh Nguyen brings to his collection of short stories, The Refugees, greater social consciousness of the American Dream and how it takes shape with a keener awareness of the distinctive features of nationalities and personhood. Like a father teaching his son, Nguyen teaches the reader about the consequence of a perplexing issue in American culture. It is the issue of astigmatism and how healing it can be to recognize the distinctive face of another’s humanity. Like Adichie, who wants a world with compassion and recognition for migrants like Ifemelu, Nguyen makes a heart wrenching plea for the refugee to be seen, heard, and welcomed. Nguyen knocks at his reader’s heart. It is not to pity an uprooted population modeled after real characters, but rather experience them as human beings instead of as a social disrupter. The author personalizes a group of Vietnamese-Americans living on the West Coast in his story collection, The Refugees. In a review published in February 2017, The New Yorker observed that at any time, the refugee is likely to be confronted--confounded--by the myopia of non-Vietnamese. Literary critic Tom Zelman writes, “The older population is exiled from their Fatherland and culture by the forces of history, whereas the younger population find themselves stranded between the ghost-ridden silence of their parents’ generation and the promise of American plenitude that they themselves can’t seem to grasp” (Zelman, 2017). Unlike Adichie, Nguyen treats identity as flimsy, accidental, or even mutable. This idea is explored in “The Transplant,” where Arthur is the beneficiary of a liver from a Vietnamese donor and has "trouble distinguishing one nationality of Asian names from another," and is "also afflicted with a related, and very common, astigmatism wherein all Asians appeared the same" (THE, O.R., 2017). Nguyen painstakingly reveals the necessity for personhood because from it rises identity. A liver transplant might have saved the life of Arthur Arellano, a Mexican-American man with autoimmune hepatitis, but the minimal effort Arthur makes to trace the name of his donor after receiving sensitive donor information accidentally released by the hospital hardly gives Arthur the right to receive the gift of another’s life. The letter reveals Vietnamese widower and grandfather, Men Vu, as Arthur’s savior.  Arthur’s effort to trace the donor’s family ceases immediately when he meets the man claiming to be Men’s son: Louis Vu, a Chinese migrant. The counterfeit businessman capitalizes on Arthur’s sense of guilt. Gratitude could almost make Arthur a better person, but he chooses to be indebted instead. In one instance after offering the garage as a storage house to Louis, Arthur hears Louis out about the money to be made in counterfeit items like Dolce & Gabbana frames. “I’m hearing what you’re telling me,” Arthur says (Nguyen, 2017 pp. 73). Subtly, Nguyen references the sense of sight and hearing with the image of glasses and conversation. Louis says, “Hopefully you’ve been listening and not just hearing” (Nguyen, 2017 pp. 75).  This singular instance reveals the issue of ignoring personhood, lumping together what may seem obvious instead of responding to what is real and complex. Readers may be more surprised than Arthur when Louis Vu is revealed as a fraud and the true son of Men Vu finds Arthur. Perhaps Nguyen’s greatest lesson for readers is that social issues arise from assumption and neglect, and people like Aurther need a keen awareness of others beside himself and not just a liver transplant.   

Perhaps an abuse of citizenship by certain individuals in America has created a lack of belonging and rise in racism and astigmatism. It has been asserted by political scholars and theorists that every political regime creates a certain individual, and for the American, he knows he is free because of independent thinkers who saw themselves as such. Adichie and Nugyen write with the knowledge that a refugee and migrant may experience the same opportunities an American enjoys, such as the rights of freedom and equality among other men on account of God given reason and freedom. Authors of Americanah and The Refugees notice corrosion in the 244 year old American Dream, believing the migrant and refugee are unwelcome. Individuality is a fruit of a basic human right, freedom, which Nigerian-born Ifemelu learns to enjoy and fight for even when others try to shape her into another type of human because of their own misunderstanding of the American ideal. Personhood, as described by Nguyen, similarly seems to be a relic of a distant philosophy and the refugee feels defaced and third class. These issues are a result of loss of memory from the country’s early beginning. American philosophers and theorists like Judith Butler, for example, acknowledge that American principles have formed many people into a certain type of person, yet the ability to live freely extends to all within the country because of several documents, but most especially from the Declaration of Independence. It is written in the Declaration of Independence a bold statement of truth: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights." The American Founders conceived an idea that started from the undeniable truth about human equality, that it's basis comes from sharing in human nature and a shallow grasp at understanding the very nature of God. These founders understood and reflected on man's place in their Creator’s creation. Thomas Jefferson, along with many of his contemporaries, employed the use of the term "self evident" in the Declaration of Independence which simply meant that the nature of men makes man equal to all mankind. The American political experiment was and is an attempt to develop the individual most fully, though some experience an American culture forgetful of its origin. Jefferson’s succinct and memorable phrase that “all men are created equal” should include any person who makes a home on American soil and Adichie and Nguyen remind readers of it.  

Pulling readers into a global conversation with the authors’ keen view of migration and racism, Americanah and The Refugees uncover the plight of migrants and refugees who desire to belong and become truly themselves. Considering the political philosophy and reality of America and the opportunity the country offers, Adichie and Nguyen share hope for a better place. Some fiction views America as a utopia, whereas others see the sin of a human republic. Adichie and Nguyen appropriately challenge both ideas. There should be moral and social reform for the public and both writers critique social issues and policies concerned with human connection and migration. Americanah and The Refugees are powerful stories, important for people everywhere, but most especially for those in America. On the political scale, Adichie and Nguyen express the reality of current situations through human stories. Butler and Jefferson express political theories that may shape the best sort of human. From these stories and theories, it is left with the 21st century reader to give voice to the voiceless and welcome all sorts of people searching for a place in the world, especially in America.

Bibliography

Adichie, C.N.  2014, Americanah,  Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Howes, D.E. 2010, "Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?” By Judith Butler. New York.

Landry, A. 2018, "Black is Black is Black? African immigrant acculturation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing" Melus. 

Nguyen, V.T. 2017, The Refugees, Grove Press, New York.

Taylor, J. 2019, "Language, Race, and Identity in Adichie's Americanah and Bulowayo's We

Need New Names" The New York Times, New York.

THE, O.R. 2017, Not All There, Condé Nast Publications, Inc, New York.

Zelman, T. 2017, REVIEW: 'The Refugees,' by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Star Tribune, Minnesota.