Exploration of identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, and Americanah

The present thesis will attempt to explore identity from the approach of a post-colonialist perspective and shed light on an African-American writer who used identity as a primary theme in most of her novels. This present study is the analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's three books and the study will describe how the main female characters in all of these fights to construct her identity as a woman struggling with her current society, and how this affects her growth of selfhood. This thesis will emphasis on female characters in Adichie's works to establish their identity and determine how they found their postcolonial individuality. Identity is a frequent theme throughout the three novels that will be explored in this thesis. In this thesis, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels and main women characters that will be examined are Kambili in Purple Hibiscus (2003), Ifemelu in Americanah (2013) and Olanna Ozobia in Half of a Yellow Sun (2014). The female characters in these novels relate in that they are all trying to find out who they are as women in their current societies. The central characters in these three novels have described as smart, powerful, and autonomous young women who cross beyond desires in their contemporary culture. Furthermore, how social pressures like those that racial differences and patriarchy difficulties have performed through immigration described. They ask themselves some questions like ‗who am I?', ‗what am I?' to discover their place in this world, and create a room for themselves both on the inside and the outside. Keywords: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Identity, African-American