Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Pede Hollist's So the Path Does Not Die, published within a year of each other, have striking similarities in the issues they address, the manner in which the issues are treated, and in the subject position of the authors. Adichie and Hollist write from diasporic situations, and the two novels combine genres: bildungsroman, romance, comedy and social commentary, and events in both texts cut across nations. More importantly, both novels discuss diverse subject matter: race, identity, home and exile, culture, self-definition, sexism, romance, hair and food politics, homecoming and more. In these texts, these issues are not treated as singular or separate but are braided tightly together, like the intricate manner of braiding hair introduced to the reader in the opening scene of Americanah (11-13). These issues constitute the complex, intertwined combination of experiences that afflict and characterize transnational migration. Adichie and Hollist illustrate how racism affects the identity of Africans in the diaspora and combines with other factors to encourage return ‘home’.

This essay examines transnational migration and the complex dynamics of race in diasporan existence as these issues are presented in Americanah and So the Path Does Not Die (Path), through the lives, respectively, of Ifemelu and Fina: the reasons for their departure from their homelands, their experiences of racism in America, how these experiences affect their self-definition, and how the resulting evolution and acceptance of their identities propel them to return to their respective homelands. The essay also examines the nature and the implications of their return and demonstrates that diasporic return often impacts positively on the development of the homeland. The essay proposes that Adichie and Hollist's presentation of the complexities of transnational migration, ending in the return, takes the shape of a quadrangle, a twist on the triangular slave trade description. Unlike in the triangular trade, in which migration is forced and there is no return, the migration quadrangle closes with a return.

Transnational migration is a perennial issue in contemporary African literature. Buchi Emecheta's The New Tribe and Kehinde, Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale, Alasan Mansaray's A Haunting Heritage and Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters’ Street confirm this preoccupation. The circumstances leading to migration are diverse but most instances of migration are geared towards a desire for something better than that which exists in the home nation.