The Indigenous Structures of Narrative in Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation
1 - استادیار گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، دانشگاه پیام نور، تهران، ایران.
Keywords: African feminism, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Igbo, Indigenous culture, Oral culture, Spivak, Subaltern woman,
Abstract :
The influence of the Igbo indigenous culture is of structural significance to the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an African female novelist from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria. The present article studies the effects and reflections of the Igbo oral heritage in the language and narrative structure of Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun as a significant cultural phenomenon at the hand of the Igbo female novelist to create a discourse of counter-identification with that of the colonial and/or patriarchal discourse. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues, ‘the epistemic violence’ of colonialism has long silenced the voices of the subaltern women. Her postcolonial feminist theory of the cultural difference, which calls for a self-conscious un-learning of the Eurocentric theories and focusing on the cultural specificities of the Third World women, serves as the backbone of the present study. The textual strategies of recursion and revision, as defined by Karla F.C. Holloway, are employed in this novel to re-read the palimpsest of the non-recognized history of the subaltern African woman. This novel provides a space where these silenced voices can be heard throughout using the strategies mentioned above. Adichie emphasizes the indigenous Igbo cultural factors informing the self-image and development of the identity of the subaltern woman in post-independent Nigeria under violent militarism, civil war, and ethnic fanaticism. The study of the novel reveals the significant influence of the Igbo oral heritage not only in the language but also in the narrative structure of the novel.