Term of Award

Fall 2024

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English (M.A.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of English

Committee Chair

Lindsey N. Chappell

Committee Member 1

Jane V. Rago

Committee Member 2

Joyce White

Abstract

In “Why Blackness, Black Girl?” I argue that as a consequence of imperialism, Western Blackness has an interdependent relationship with whiteness, resulting in the domination of Western Blackness over non-Western Blackness. Tensions between both groups are usually portrayed by Western media as divisive. I pose Multilocality as a theory to reconcile this tension. I use Taiye Selasi's concept of the multilocal, and her Three Markers (3 R’s) to identify where hybridized identities are local to and how they can connect to each local space. I expand Selasi’s concept into a theory called Multilocality, and added a fourth marker that I call Resistance. By applying Multilocality to Blackness as a construct and to the Black Diaspora, I connect those therein to Africa and one another without homogenizing or essentializing borders, boundaries, or people groups. I also use Multilocality to mediate the ambivalence of overlapping postcolonial identities through negotiation, which allows all aspects of identities to contextually converge and diverge within a local space.

Using Mary Seacole’s memoir Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), I analyze how hybridized identities are limited to “single stories” and examine the consequences of that on real bodies. In Chimamanda Adichie’s novel Americanah (2013), I observe how Ifemelu allows her identities to work in tandem with each other, and how she embraces each change in her identities as she migrates. I place Mary Seacole from Wonderful Adventures and Ifemelu from Americanah in conversation with one another to analyze different forms of Blackness spread out across the factors of time, distance, migration, culture, and nationality to prove how Multilocality is an inclusive but also individualistic way to view identities. Both women allow their identities to contextually converge and diverge. Analyzing both of these women together is necessary because they highlight the ways in which all of our identities have become “messy” due to colonialism. Some characters experience a nervous condition because they attempt to fit into a rigid Black identity, and they have no homeland to ground them. Multilocality recognizes that “home” informs identities, and since all aspects are carried at all times, home becomes a site where all these identities can express themselves.

OCLC Number

1478263881

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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