Hybridity, Ambivalence and Identity Crisis in Contemporary Nigerian Diaspora Novels

This research investigates the issues of hybridity, ambivalence and the resultant identity crisis two Nigerian contemporary migration narratives. Hybrid identities arise when different groups of people interact with one another and create new identities and cultures. The study draws illustrations from Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late (2020) and Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference (2012). The paper leans on the post-colonial literary theory and it was complemented with special focus on Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. The analysis of the texts uncovers several themes and techniques depicting hybridity and ambivalence. They includes themes like identity switch, relocation, individualism, alienation, instability and invisibility, depression while the techniques of anecdotes, flashback, internal monologue, contrast, and paradox are deployed to create aesthetics. The study discovers that the would-be migrants starts their binary or hybrid lifestyle from the day they plan to relocate abroad and that the merger of the home culture and the diasporic culture is the major challenge of the migrant in the diaspora.