Algumas faces da protagonista Ifemelu no romance Americanah, de Chimamanda Adichie.

Abstract

In our society, despite of many achievements, the discourse on African literature is still characterized by stereotypes. It seems that there is a certain attachment to ignore the importance of the historical, social context related to the African culture around the world, including Brazil. This fact results in the dissemination of prejudice concerning the history of the negroes in our country, in addition to show an overview on the African continent as a place in which the poverty, the disease and wild animals prevails, what makes to disregard all of the richness of its countries. The contemporary African literature allows the writers to produce their proper text contents in order to report the social injustices that surround them; but they report, in fact, that Africa continues to be an undervalued continent for several people, besides sharing a segregationist feeling. From this perspective, this study seeks to provide a reflection on the African literature as a tool that can help with the development of the young negroes identity. This way, from the studies of Candido (2000), Brait (1995), Bauman (2005) and Hall (2006) we will reflect on the complexity of Ifemelu, the protagonist of the novel Americanah (2014), by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this line, this current study is characterized by a bibliographic, qualitative research that is divided in three chapters. In the first one, it is presented a theoretical background for a subsequent interpretation of the protagonist on the novel. Then, it is seeked to situate the writer in the present time, so that the role of the Afro-American literature can be highlighted, in order to enhance the proper African literature in the contemporary time, by ensuring the historical on the Nigerian literature in the post- colonial literature field. The last chapter involves an essential discussion about the complexity of the principal character on the novel analyzed. The viewpoints achieved reveal important contributions to further studies, because it is clear the lack of female speech in several fields, such as: politics, economy, order commands, especially when these women are negroes ones.