Final Proposal

Chapter 11: Natural Hair in America

Group: Olivia Hare, Samantha Hacker, Lauren Aversa, Adonte Langston

PROPOSAL

We will adapt chapter 11 of Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie into an interactive experience using Storyboard That. Throughout the novel, Adichie uses hair as a symbol of the oppression and culture that immigrants experience within America. Chapter 11 of the text illustrates Aunty Uju and Ifemelu’s experience with their natural hair while adapting to the professional standards and acceptable norms.

Aunty Uju passes her United States Medical Licensing Examination to become a licensed family physician within America. After receiving this acceptance she is concerned about her hair, stating: ““I have to take my braids out for my interviews and relax my hair. Kemi told me that I shouldn’t wear braids to the interview. If you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional” (Adichie, 146). Ifemelu is unhappy with this idea, but Auntie Uju insists that “you are in a country that is not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed” (Adichie, 146).

Aunty Uju and Ifemelu’s experience with the pressure to alter their natural hair is a common phenomenon for immigrants beginning to adapt to the United States. An article published by Allure Magazine titled Goodbye to “Good Hair”: How I Learned to Love My Natural Texture After Moving to America, discusses author Elaine Musiwa’s experience as a first-generation immigrant from Zimbabwe. Musiwa accounts her hair being labeled as “nappy” and “kinky” when moving to America. Musiwa had a strong pressure to perm her hair or apply box braids. Similarly, in February 2019, new guidelines were released by the New York City Commission on Human Rights enforcing that targeting people based on their hair or hairstyle, at work, school or in public spaces, is now considered racial discrimination.

The final project’s interactive story medium is a digital storyboard using “Storyboard That.” The storyboard will consist of multiple panels that will recreate Ifemleu and Aunty Uju’s discussion in Chapter 11 about Aunty Uju taking her braids out for her job interview because she was told that in America braids are seen as unprofessional and she wanted to present herself in a professional manner (Adichie 146). The digital storyboard helps visualize the interaction between Ifemelu and her aunt and present the overall message in a simple manner that is easy for viewers to understand.

Musiwa, E. (2018, July 25). How I Learned to Love My Natural Texture Despite America’s Beauty Standards. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https://www.allure.com/story/goodbye-to-good-hair-beauty-standard

Final Proposal

By Tristan Abrenica and Annya Pereira

The scene we have decided to depict from the novel Americanah is Chapter 30, when Obinze was getting arrested by immigration officers in England prior to completing his secret contract for permanent residency through marriage with Cleotide. This scene is not unusual in real life. While there are many possible processes for acquiring permanent residency, one of the options is through what is commonly known as a “Green Card Marriage.” The scene highlights Obinze’s situation and resorting to marriage just to stay legally in the United Kingdom. In a dialogue between the policemen and Obinze, Obinze was being asked his legality (Adichie 344):

“Were you aware that your visa had expired?”

“Yes,” Obinze said.

“Were you about to have a sham marriage?”

This scene is important because it emphasizes people’s unwavering desire to live in foreign countries for a better life, while also portraying the struggles they face in pursuit of acquiring it. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. citizens are able to petition their foreign national fiancé for a K-1 nonimmigrant visa to travel and apply for permanent residency (USCIS). This is similar to Obinze’s situation because he is marrying Cleotide to obtain his permanent resident status in the U.K. Applying for permanent residency in the U.K. is somewhat similar from the U.S. in that migrants are eligible to apply for permanent residency if they have a spouse that is a citizen of the United Kingdom or part of the European Economic Area. Obinze was trying to acquire his legal residency through this process with Cleotide, however, he was arrested and placed in a detention center moments before they were married.

We decided to use StoryboardTHAT as the medium to portray the scene because the audience are able to visually see the process that took place before his marriage, his arrest, and the detention center Obinze was placed at before his deportation. Using a storyboard to showcase the marriage and arrest would have a greater impact on the audience as opposed to if they were to read it because they aren’t afforded the same visual queues as a storyboard. The website allows us to use visual, linguistic, and gestural modes which will have a profound effect on the audience as opposed to other formats.

 

Citations

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah (Ala Notable Books for Adults) (p. ). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.“K Nonimmigrant.”

USCIS, 2 Sept. 2009, www.uscis.gov/greencard/fiancees.

 

Final Proposal

Proposal

Jessica, Amanda, Erin

We are completing our final project on Gender and Generation Roles. As we continue further research on this topic, we know that gender and generation roles is a conflicting topic within our society as well as outside of the United States. In this case, Nigeria. In some ways it has lightened up a bit. Even though we are all brought up differently, we all still face similar gender roles. And these roles are affected by future generation and social roles as well.

Let’s start with generation roles. We definitely see generation roles in Nigeria and the United States. In Nigeria, there is more structured parenting, meaning children can’t be disrespectful in any way. And they are more likely to listen to what their parents ask of them. If they disobey, the children get physical punishment. In the United States, parents are more lenient with their children. This isn’t necessarily a good thing because children then become rebellious. On the other hand, children are more allowed to have their own ideas/dreams despite what their parents want for them.

Now onto gender roles. Keep in mind, gender roles are “the role or behavior learned by a person as appropriate to their gender, determined by the prevailing cultural norms”  (Lumen Learning). For example, in Nigeria, women are “expected to plan office parties because it’s a ‘woman’s job’…..As a woman, I am expected to make my own meals…”(Samiha Nettikkara). In America, women are “nurturing, caring, social, emotional” (Treleaven 1). They were also caretakers .  Men were considered “aggressive, instinctual, private, promiscuous”(Treleaven 1). They were also the breadwinners of the family.

With all of this being said, for our group project we are going to use the scene from chapter 5 of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. In this scene, we can see gender roles from when Ifemelu was shocked when she found out that Aunty Uju didn’t have her own money because the General refused to let her handle the money. This also shows generation roles because men are considered responsible for going out to work and handling money.  For the visual aspect of this project, we are doing a storyboard comic. We thought this would be a great way to show the chosen scene from Americanah because we thought it would be a fun way to show visual representation of the gender/generation roles from the Nigerian aspect, specifically in Aunty Uju’s case.

“Gender Roles in the U.S.” Lumen Learning. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-sociology-os/chapter/gender-roles-in-the-u-s/

 

Treleaven, Christina. “Gender, Generation, and Jobs: Differences in Gender Role Ideologies by Age and Occupation”, 2015. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=sociology_masrp

Nettikkara, Samiha. “What it Means to be Female in Nigeria”. BBC News, 1Jul, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33239356

Final Proposal

The inspiration for this project was mainly found with the struggles that refugees and immigrants face when acquiring citizenship through legal and semi-legal means. In particular, we found the section of Americanah wherein Obinze was struggling to acquire citizenship to be of particular interest. He is a man who we have grown to know rather well – a character we could identify with, so his desire to stay in the UK was an understandable one. However, the difficulties that he was presented with seeking entirely legal means of citizenship were almost ludicrous. His failure, while due in part to his situation, is indicative of a greater issue that exists within Western nations’ policies regarding refugees and immigration. According to a recent PBS article, the United States has once again reduced the maximum number of immigrants and refugees it will allow into the country and this policy of denial is mimicked by many other nations around the world. While the extent of these policies is not entirely the same as that present in the novel, it is still an issue that we are dealing with today.

Americanah certainly did an excellent job of presenting an accurate depiction of modern immigration, and the lengths people will go to in order to stay in Western “developed” countries (see Obinze’s attempted marriage to a British native). However, we think that we will be able to engage a wider audience if we shifted this narrative to the medium of video games. Our intention is to design a video game wherein the player is forced into the same situation as an immigrant or refugee attempting to flee desperate situations. In our game, players will be set loose in a cityscape that is controlled by an authoritarian government that has adopted the 17th-century practice of the masquerade into common usage (everyone in this society wears a mask). The player is thrust into this environment with one goal, to acquire a mask (the mask in this situation will be a metaphor for citizenship in the country, as nationality is another aspect of our identity, another mask that we wear to distinguish ourselves). However, you cannot move openly through this city without a mask and to be spotted without one is a death sentence.

Project Group: Noon, Fedor, and Sines

Villagomez, Jessica. “Seeking Asylum in the U.S. under Trump.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 1 May 2018, www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/seeking-asylum-in-the-u-s-under-trump.

Storyboard Pitch

After analyzing our provocation post assignment, we felt the most inspired to do a project that reflected Ifemelu’s experiences in college as a Nigerian student. We believe that it is not fair that people from other countries feel like they have to conform to American preferences. A scene in the book when Ifemelu was registering for classes, the registrar talked down to Ifemelu because she had a Nigerian accent. It said that Ifemelu “shrinks” (Adichie 164) from feeling ashamed of her Nigerian accent. Because of this incident Ifemelu stops talking in her Nigerian accent and starts practicing an American accent (Adichie 164). We wanted to explore and express Ifemelu’s experience in Chapter 14 facing assimilation struggles due to her Nigerian race in the American classroom.

Our inspiration is supported by Making Americans: Schooling, Diversity, and Assimilation in the Twenty-First Centurywhere Cristina Lash sums up her study as looking at how the “role of race [is] a barrier in the assimilation process, particularly as it unfolds in schools” (1). This is one of our primary sources since it is a recent peer-reviewed journal entry as well as discussing issues that Ifemelu faced when she came to the American university scene. This article studied the ways middle schools teach American identity, specifically looking at Castro Middle School, a “diverse school in a city profoundly shaped by immigration.” (Lash 3). This revealed how immigrants are “made” at Castro through “direct classroom instruction, school events and programming, and daily interactions between peers, teachers, and staff” (Lash 4). We wanted to reference this when considering how Ifemelu faced assimilation into America, specifically the university.

The platform we chose to construct our project on is StoryboardTHAT. This medium is a website that gives us the tools and resources to create a storyboard about an immigrant student in a college scene and the challenges they face. The website we will be using claims it has an extensive image library, flexible layouts, and is intuitive and simple which is beneficial to our group. A storyboard allows us to use visual, creative aspects such as what characters look like and what our scene will look with many details. It also allows us to use words in speech and thought bubbles straight from the characters to understand how they feel and why. A third aspect of this medium is where we can put text about what is happening in the picture underneath of it. All of these elements will help us effectively tell the story of what an immigrant student goes through.

“Chapter 14.” Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anchor Books, A Division of Random House LLC, New York, 2013, pp. 164-165.

Cristina L. Lash. “Making Americans: Schooling, Diversity, and Assimilation in the Twenty-First Century.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 5, 2018, p. 99. EBSCOhost, doi:10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.05.

Galli, Fausto, and Giuseppe Russo. “Immigration Restrictions and Second-Generation Cultural Assimilation: Theory and Quasi-Experimental Evidence.” Journal of Population Economics, vol. 32, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 23–51. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s00148-018-0694-z.