Synchronicity and Asynchronicity: The Migrant Adaptation Process in Selected African Migrant Novels

Abstract

In the migrant’s adaptation process, there is a divide between fitting in and finding it difficult to adapt. Using textual analysis, this paper investigates these conflicting factors in selected African migrant novels, examining each factor under the prescribed terminologies of “synchronicity” and “asynchronicity. The paper is both qualitative and content-based and uses as a theoretical framework The Adaptation Process. In Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, and Miral al-Tahawy’s Brooklyn Heights, the paper has as its findings the following: that to successfully achieve synchronicity, which is to integrate, a migrant has to attain structural integration, cognitive integration, social integration, and identificatory integration in the host society. Models of Western thought are seen to dominate in the host society overseas. To adapt, the migrant has no choice but to modify his or her cultural conduct and expression to conform to the standard of the host society. The paper recommends that further literary studies be conducted on the role that language has to play in ensuring synchronicity.