Two women and an experience: Chimamanda Adichie's dualistic narrative

Abstract

This article analyses the short story "A private experience" by Chimamanda Adichie, highlighting not only the author's narrative aesthetics, but also the themes addressed in her plots. The impasse between religions, cultures, countries and ethnicities is a constant mark in her stories. In the short story we chose for study, we privilege the encounter, the union and the tenderness of the human experience exchanged between the two characters. Instead of highlighting differences, this study advocates reconciliation between peoples and cultures, as stressed by the author herself in her fictions and essays. We follow the thoughts of Pascale Casanova, Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha which enlighten us about conflicting and antagonistic situations in contemporary society. The result of this study points to a possible mediation between individual identity and the general framework of society. In fact, the literary text connects what social reality insists on separating.