Blackness e morte in Notes on Grief di Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

While Adichie’s most recent book, Notes on Grief (2021), is primarily a meditation on the devastating loss of her father, the book highlights her struggle to negotiate between two separate geographic and cultural worlds. Her father’s death catalyzes a divide between how she and her Igbo relatives contend with his passing and thus how she comes to identify herself in relation to others. Even as she longs for the comfort of her Nigerian homeland in the aftermath of his death, she resists accepting the rituals of her people because they feel more performative than genuine and remain bound to outdated notions of gender. Notes on Grief is an exploration of her complex feelings following the death of her father and as such largely eschews the political valence of Black precarity in contemporary American life. However, her reflections on the passing of James Nwoye Adichie suggest a new awareness and comfort with her racialized American identity.