THE BLACK WOMAN ON MOVE: RACIAL IDENTITY IN

AMERICANAH AND THE HATE YOU GIVE

Aiswarya Sanath
PhD Research Scholar
19HS92R16
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
IIT Kharagpur

Abstract

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate”

Toni Morrison

The literary avenues of American literature are replete with fictional works

which probe into the multitude reality of the African American life. It delves

into the moral, political and aesthetic concerns and paradigms of the African

American experiences. African American novels as a genre is a cultural and

literary act which can be regarded as pinnacle of achievement and a cultural

heritage that prompts many questions and answers. Here, writing is also a form

of resistance where the act of writing should itself be perceived under the

boarder lens of cultural revisionism, of deconstructing history and cultural as

well as historical memory. The contours of resistance widen its gaps when we

regard the African American women novels. When Sojourner Truth proclaimed

“Ain’t I a Woman?” to a self-effacing crowd she was asserting the

discrimination faced by her fellow sisters in the vast lands of the America.

Following the footsteps as laid out by Sojourner Truth and others, African

American women writers subsequently challenged the notion of white privilege

and racism by constantly placing their lived experiences as black women at the

foreground of their politics.

This paper intends to analyze the psychological paradigms and patterns of lived

experiences as African American women in the country. By a close reading of

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Angie Thomas’s The Hate You

Give, the paper intends to explore the avenues of assimilation and evolution of

Black identity in African American women. Focusing not only on the narrative

explored in the novels, but also on the language production and consumption as

well the paper will also attempt to regard the stages of Black Racial identity

development as propounded by William E. Cross Jr. in his psychological theory

named “Nigrescence” model. By employing theoretical framework adopted

from racial identity theories, this paper investigates distinctive stages of

evolution of African American self – consciousness in the characters. It will

further attempt to consider how blatant racism manifests itself in the

psychological and emotional development of the protagonists of the novel. It

will examine the emotional, cognitive and behavioral processes as associated

with being a Black woman in an American society. Through the prototypes of

the characters, the psychological model adopted for the study will also examine
attitudes and beliefs that an African American woman have about belonging to

her race individually, and the African American race collectively.

Keywords: Racial Identity, African American Identity, African American

consciousness