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@article{206317,
        author = {Dr.R.Rohini},
        title = {An Ethical Critique of Select Diasporic Narratives: A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {2},
        pages = {897-901},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=206317},
        abstract = {Diasporic literature has increasingly become a vital domain for examining questions of identity, ethics, and cultural negotiation in a globalised world. This article offers an ethical critique of selected diasporic narratives through a close reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. It argues that diaspora is not merely a spatial displacement but an ethical condition in which subjectivity is continuously reconstructed through competing demands of memory, belonging, and cultural recognition. The study foregrounds how ethical tensions emerge in migrant experiences when individuals are required to negotiate inherited cultural obligations alongside pressures of assimilation into dominant Western societies. In The Namesake, Gogol Ganguli’s struggle with his name and identity reflects a deeper ethical conflict between filial responsibility and individual autonomy. Lahiri presents assimilation as a morally ambivalent process that often results in the erosion of cultural memory and intergenerational continuity. Conversely, Americanah situates its ethical concerns within the politics of race and representation, where Ifemelu’s experiences in the United States expose the contradictions embedded in liberal multicultural discourse. Her narrative demonstrates how racial categorisation becomes an ethical system that shapes recognition, voice, and social legitimacy. By adopting an interpretive ethical framework informed by diaspora studies, the article contends that both novels construct diaspora as an “in-between” moral space. Within this space, identity is neither fixed nor fully autonomous but is continually negotiated through relational encounters. Ultimately, the study argues that diasporic narratives compel a rethinking of ethics as dynamic, contextual, and deeply embedded in lived cultural experience, rather than as abstract universal principles.},
        keywords = {Diaspora, Ethics, Identity, Hybridity, Migration, Cultural Memory, Recognition.},
        month = {July},
        }