The Immigrant Burden: Navigating Xenophobia in Antoine Gnintedem’s Alien at Home
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53103/cjlls.v6i4.289Keywords:
African Immigrant, Burden, Intercultural Understanding, Social/Cultural Integration, XenophobiaAbstract
There is no doubt that in a society where racial affinities and discrepancies are subtly reinforced by social interactions, migrants, particularly Africans, are prone to challenges of integration and acceptance. Coming from a background which is generally ‘mediocre’, ‘less advanced’ and ‘inferior’, these immigrants meet with a cold, prejudiced and often vile social atmosphere that threatens both their sense of self and place, making immigration a burden rather than the relief it was conceived to be. The acute discrimination, ridicule, rejection and hatred meted out to them pave a clear path to xenophobia. Antoine Gnintedem’s Alien at Home (2022) is a shrewd reminder of the pain of migration of Africans to America - the battle with racial favouritism and the struggle for cultural integration - which unquestionably lead to identity complications. My main argument in this paper hinges on the fact that even to this day, African migrants still face challenges of a racial/xenophobic nature which they must manage to guarantee a measure of social integration. I therefore aim to lay bare, through Gnintedem’s lens, ways through which these migrants experience xenophobia and how they can cautiously navigate race-related hatred to assume a confident sense of self and purpose in a hostile society.
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