Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
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| will Come, is concerned with interactions within the family at the level of friendship, In the Authors note at the end of Half of a Yellow Sun Adichie points to the influence of early works on Biafra on her creation of characters and what she calls the mood of middle-class Biafra”. She also gives along list of books on Biafra that informed her research. 15 Maja the protagonists Father and mother in The Opposite House are black Cubans. However, her mother constantly reaffirms her Yoruba origins by the altar of Yoruba gods she has builtin her house. Maja‟s boyfriend is a Jew who grew up in Ghana and speaks Ewe. While they all reside in London, Maja‟s mother speaks Spanish and English and also teaches German. All these characters are constantly haunted by space – their origins (Cuba) and the London they are living in at present. In this text Cuban and Yoruban mythologies intermingle. 16 Interview by Ike Anya in her website – www.sefiatta.com/news (accessed 20 January 2008) 12 religion and other aspects of culture told through the childhood figure and the memories of the adult protagonist. Chris Abani, the other author in the study presents a different perspective compared to the rest. Abani‟s Graceland focuses on marginal city spaces and slum dwellers in Lagos, depicting a different perspective of childhood in postcolonial Nigeria. Graceland demonstrates the influence of popular artistic cultural products of American, Indian and Latin American origin on the narrator Elvis Oke. These products include music and movies which Elvis grew up consuming. While the plot moves alternately through the past and present, the military background works as a metaphorical sounding board. 17 Abani‟s The Virgin of Flames on the other hand seems to transpose his earlier concerns to a different cultural context in Los Angeles. Here, the protagonist Black, who can be considered an older contemporary of Elvis, also lives in the marginal spaces of the Eastern part of this megalopolis. Elvis‟s childhood memories seem to inform the marginalised position of his present life. In order for us to locate the foregoing concerns as either complicating or extending critical debates on contemporary identities, it is imperative to map out how childhood as a theme, debate, concern, style or ideological position in African literature generally and Nigerian literature particularly has evolved. In this way, the study acknowledges that representation of child figures, images and memories is not new in African literature. Instead, the focus and intention of this study lies in highlighting the evolution of the construction of these child figures, images and memories but also the lack of a sustained examination of it as an independent and influential category of the analysis of contemporary identity formation. Indeed, the increased return of the writers to the narrative of childhood presents an opportunity to examine childhood as a set of ideas for The text represents the daily struggles of slum dwellers for food, occupation, shelter and clothing. Fantasy is a dominant element in Graceland with the characters moving from one video world to another. Graceland works through the popular video image, the intense cultural energy of the slum landscape depicted in the fantastic worlds these characters move in and out of, as well as the daily struggle for survival. Yet the father and son relationship between Elvis and his father Sunday Oke is significant in locating the space of the family as a great influence in Elvis‟s perception of the transcultural world he is living in. 13 understanding how contemporary forms of identity in Nigerian literature are (being) constructed. Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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