countries of the mind Spacetime chronotopes in Purple

136 making slap-slap sounds on the marble flow Space is populated with objects that do not just serve the function of a normative setting. Indeed, as Brenda Cooper writes, material objects have spirits dancing within them (b. We read for example, The off- whitewalls with the framed photos of Grandfather were narrowing down, bearing down on me. Even the glass table was moving toward me (PH, 7).
Kambili is aware of the space she inhabits, conscious of the monochromatic world that signifies the uniformity and as it occurs to her later, the monologic nature of her nuclear family space. Her apprehension of her surrounding has an animated and descriptive vigour that highlights the role of space in her narrative Our yard was wide enough to hold a hundred people dancing atilogu, spacious enough for each dancer to do the usual somersaults and land on the next dancers shoulders. The compound walls, topped by coiled electric wires, were so high I could not seethe cars driving by on our street. It was early rainy season, and the frangipani trees planted next to the walls already filled the yard with the sickly-sweet scent of their flowers. A row of purple bougainvillea, cut smooth and straight as a buffet table, separated the gnarled trees from the driveway. Closer to the,
house, vibrant bushes of hibiscus reached out and touched one another
as if they were exchanging their petals. The purple plants had started
to push out sleepy buds, but most of the flowers were still on the red ones. They seemed to bloom fast, those red hibiscuses, considering how often Mama cut them to decorate the church altar and how often visitors plucked them as they walked past to their parked cars.
(9) Emphasis added
Kambili‟s eco-critical consciousness helps us formulate an ecological context of her title that, in away, transcends the symbolic, metaphoric and metonymic. For Kambili, nature outside her bedroom seems in a dialogue Closer to the house, vibrant bushes of hibiscus

137 reached out and touched one another as if they were exchanging their petals This image seems to stand in contrast with her gothic feeling of entrapment – the one she experiences by watching from her enclosed room. The colour purple and its implied symbolism intertextually connect Kambili to another protagonist, across the Atlantic, fourteen year-old Celie in Alice Walkers The Colour
Purple. Heather Hewett makes an interesting argument, connecting the transnational intertextuality” found in Purple Hibiscus to what she refers to as a corpus of Black woman‟s literary tradition (2005:87). The colour purple as a symbol comes with intertextual markers that as Hewett eruditely discusses, allows Purple Hibiscus into dialogue with a wide transnational textual terrain – part of Adichie‟s dialogic strategy, that chapter four will also examine through the notion of genealogy. The hibiscus bushes area focal point of significance that not only provide symbolic, metaphoric and metonymic capital to Kambili‟s narrative, but also give a heuristic shape to the topography of Kambili‟s home compound. Through the technique of foregrounding, the bushes are positioned at the seams of the narrative, representing trajectories of emotions, memories and actions as Kambili says It was mostly Mamas prayer group members who plucked flowers a woman tucked one behind her ear once – I saw her clearly from my window. But even the government agents, two men in black jackets […] yanked at the hibiscus as they left (9). The hibiscus flower has a deeper metaphorical meaning that not only represents Nsukka, where Kambili found her freedom, but also people and memories. Yet, the flower is also a composite image that provides a metaphysical embodiment of freedom from the oppressive environment of her home Enugu. It becomes, within the storyscape, a topographical determinant of meaning. Moreover, Kambili demonstrates place, space, memory and meaning as creating a semantic palimpsest

138 Until Nsukka. Nsukka started it all in Aunty Ifeoma‟s little garden next to the verandah of her flat in Nsukka began to lift the silence. Jaja‟s defiance seemed tome now like Aunty Ifeoma‟s experimental purple hibiscus rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do. (16. Emphasis added) This silence is foreshadowed by vibrant bushes of hibiscus flowers reaching out exchanging their petals which Kambili observes from her window (9). Hence, the first section from which these passages are extracted sets up a quest for dialogue, in which the hibiscus flower sets topography where there is a greening of dialogue. This section is titled Breaking the gods Palm Sunday This section is immediately followed by Speaking with our Spirits before Palm Sunday where the temporal axis shifts back in time and where a larger portion is set aside on exploring the conflict developed. In this section we encounter the minutiae of space and place, as childhood is contextualised within diverse topographies. Kambili‟s world opens up spatially in the section Speaking with our Spirits before Palm Sunday It is instructive to point out that terms like speaking silence and spirits are contrasting narratives of silence and speech that characterise subjectivity in Purple

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