Transnationalism in Diasporic Context: African Woman in Gwendolen by Buchi Emecheta

Abstract

The change in identity of a diasporic African girl due to sexual trauma that she undergoes in her ‘ModerKontry’ from paternal figures and later due to racial discrimination in the adopted nation is detailed in the fiction under study. The plot of the work conceptualizes a number of multiple identities in characterization, which are subject to constant renegotiations in the transcultural scenario. Gwendolen, as a novel, depicts how the Black woman’s survival depends on her ability to use all economic, social and cultural resources available to her. The sexual laceration and racial ambivalence that the protagonist undergoes, as a transnational First World immigrant, is delineated by Buchi Emecheta in this work poignantly.

Keywords

• identity
• discrimination
• ambivalence
• diaspora
• sexual assault