Who (And Who Isn’t) Home in the African Diaspora Anonymous College

In the essay, “Rethinking the African Diaspora: Global Dynamics,” Ruth Simmons Hamilton writes that, “those who have a strong connection to - and sense of - Africa as homeland often form networks with others who share in this, building alliances based on similar experiences and worldviews and shared circumstances in the African Diaspora” (Hamilton 3). It seems important to note that these bonds that form between individuals who view “Africa as a homeland” require a lot more than a similar skin pigment or continent of familial origin. Rather, Hamilton poses a second requirement for these “networks” among people of the African Diaspora to form: the alliance must be “based on similar experiences and worldviews and shared circumstances in the African Diaspora.” With this scholarship in mind, the characters’ ultimate romantic fates in both Adichie’s novel Americanah and Haile Gerima’s film Teza makes a lot more sense. While Ifemelu’s relationship with Obinze seems a bit more promising than Anberber and Azanu’s, both narratives end in productive unions of people who share the same homeland, be that union a life together or the creation of a new life. Both of these ultimate relationships signify a return to the homeland for Ifemelu...