Mimicry and Hybridity in Nkem’s Identity Transformation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Imitation

Abstract

Postcolonial literature provides a significant space for examining how diasporic subjects negotiate cultural identity across different social and cultural environments. Although previous studies of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Imitation have addressed displacement, resistance, cultural ambivalence, and linguistic negotiation, limited attention has been given to the processual relationship between mimicry and hybridity in Nkem’s identity transformation. This study examines the representation of mimicry and hybridity in Imitation and explains how these interconnected processes contribute to the negotiation of Nkem’s postcolonial identity. Employing a qualitative literary research design, the study applies textual analysis guided by Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, ambivalence, hybridity, and the Third Space. Data were collected through close reading and textual documentation and analyzed through indicator-based coding. Mimicry was identified through imitation or adaptation to dominant cultural practices; ambivalence through contradictory cultural responses and tensions between adaptation and cultural attachment; alienation through experiences of estrangement, displacement, dissatisfaction, or lack of belonging; and hybridity through the coexistence and negotiation of Nigerian and American cultural positions. The coded passages were subsequently interpreted within their narrative contexts to trace the relationships among cultural adaptation, ambivalence, alienation, hybridity, and identity transformation. The findings reveal that mimicry is manifested through Nkem’s adaptation to American material culture, social conventions, and expectations of femininity and marital life, while the resulting ambivalence and alienation expose the limitations of cultural accommodation. Hybridity emerges as Nkem increasingly negotiates Nigerian and American cultural positions through domestic practices, bodily transformation, and changing marital relations, enabling greater self-definition and agency. The study concludes that mimicry and hybridity are dynamically interconnected rather than separate or strictly sequential processes through which Nkem’s postcolonial identity remains fluid, relational, and continuously reconstructed.