Author(s)

Zhu Hao ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Southeast University, 211102, Nanjing, China

Corresponding Author

Zhu Hao

ABSTRACT

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah has gained wide critical attention for its sharp portrayal of transnational Black identity and racial dynamics in contemporary global contexts since its publication in 2013. Much of the existing scholarship tends to approach the novel through postcolonial or feminist-nationalist frameworks leaving the affective dimensions of racial experience underexplored. This paper offers a fresh perspective by applying Sara Ahmed's theory of the cultural politics of emotion, situating Americanah within a broader global context of racialized feeling and structural injustice. In a world where race continues to be both hyper-visible and disavowed, Ahmed's affective lens helps illuminate how pain, shame, fear, and hate are not merely emotional responses but powerful social mechanisms that shape belonging, exclusion, and Black subjectivity. Through close reading of Ifemelu's diasporic experience, this paper argues that emotional life experience is deeply political and that resistance emerges not in spite of feeling, but through it. By centering emotion as a site of both vulnerability and agency, the analysis contributes to ongoing discussions of race, identity, and the affective dimensions of global Black diasporic struggles.

KEYWORDS

Emotional politics, Americanah, Racialized emotion, Black identity

CITE THIS PAPER

Zhu Hao. From Feeling to Agency: Emotional Politics and Black Resistance in Americanah. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2026). Vol. 9, No.1, 83-87. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2026.090112.

REFERENCES

[1] Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Knopf Canada, 2013.
[2] Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Routledge, 2013.
[3] Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, pp. 222–237.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Journal of Language Testing & Assessment
  
  
• Information and Knowledge Management
  
  
• Military and Armament Science
  
  
• Media and Communication Research
  
  
• Journal of Human Movement Science
  
  
• Art and Performance Letters
  
  
• Lecture Notes on History
  
  
• Philosophy Journal
  
  
• Science of Law Journal
  
  
• Journal of Political Science Research
  
  
• Journal of Sociology and Ethnology
  
  
• Advances in Broadcasting