Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
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| Daily Times […] Whenever he drained a pot of boiled beans, he thought of the slimy sink as politician. (127. Emphasis retained) Hence, the textual world of printed newspapers mediates and extends Ugwu‟s cognitive capacities. He is beginning to occupy not only lived but perceived space beyond the kitchen which is his primary sphere of influence. The worlds beyond the kitchen, those inhabited in the speech and texts he encounters, as well as in the forms of mass media, now interanimate and become dialogically coordinated. The world of metaphor, metonymy and symbolism builds up in his consciousness as he takes an increasingly participatory role in the narrative of Half of a Yellow Sun. Ugwu finds anew set of imaginative experiences and slowly enters into Master Odenigbo‟s sodality of intellectuals – this imagined community. The sodality is held together not only by the print economy, but also by the radio, an influential form of mass mediation. In Ugwu‟s case, he is increasingly able to think about what he eavesdrops from his position in the kitchen Ugwu moved closer to the door to listen he was fascinated by Rhodesia, by what was happening in the south of Africa. He could not comprehend people that looked like Richard taking away the things that belonged to people like him, 157 Ugwu, for no reason at all. (213) The above are diasporic public spheres, in which forms of mass mediation create a globalised diaspora, one that is racialised in Ugwu‟s case. This not only demonstrates Ugwu‟s growing participatory consciousness in this academic community at Nsukka, but also to the globalised sense of nationhood that was in vogue in the early sixties. Meanwhile, degrees of subjective consciousness heighten as Ugwu enters into the time of war. He shares the angst of Master Odenigbo upon the news of the Pogrom in the Northern parts of Nigeria, one of the most controversial moments in the country‟s history. This reflects what Richard, the narrator and the creator of “para-narrative book says in the third piece of The Book he writes about independence reflecting actual historical discourses about the paranoia of the North, allegedly a colonial preference to the radical South and reaching the conclusion that At independence in 1960, Nigeria was a collection of fragments held in a fragile clasp (155). Adichie represents actual historical accounts through Richards book project The World Was Silent When We Died This piece is multi-generic with testimonial accounts, historical and anthropological information as well as structurally fragmented. Through this competing narrative, a complementary, supplementary and organic narrative structure is (reconstructed. This narrative structure not only testifies to the complexity of the immanently heteroglossic nature of the topic of the Biafran war but also to the erudition of research conducted by the author. 99 If we remember, she says that this projects goal is to provoke a conversation.” 100 Half of a Yellow Sun demonstrates deliberate textual strategies of dialogue beyond just the creation of narrative voices in the characterisation process. The authorial voice takes a clear organising principle, coordinating the represented voices which are informed with along tradition of It is worth noting here that the writing of this novel coincides with Adichie‟s completion of a Masters in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University and the beginning of a Masters in African Studies at Yale University. 100 Refer to Adichie‟s interview My Book should provoke a Conversation - http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/bookshelf/book-reviews/my-book-should-provoke-a-conversation- chimamanda-ngozi.html 158 discoursing on this particular subject of the Biafran war. There is a direct referencing of actual speeches, such as that of Ojukwu (1969:193-194) upon the Declaration of the Sovereign Republic of Biafra” as represented in his radio speech (HOYS, pp. 161-162). In this narrative there are representations and representations of representations, creating a concentric pattern of representations and voices cutting across different forms of media that inform the textual landscape of the novel. Moreover, there is a dialogue of representations organised around an authorial subjectivity towards the topic of the Biafran war. When we talk about representations, we are relying on the rhetoric as Ashcroft (2001) says of history, in which case as he discusses, the notions of truth, fact and fiction become increasingly vague and meaningless as absolutes, and hence what we have are narrative truths, even fictive truths. Adichie calls them imaginative truths The textual process in Half of a Yellow Sun involves conscious choices of representations. This is constructed through making the narrative voices involved in the actual textuality. Moreover, Adichie weaves a literary historiography of previous fictive and research works on Biafra, as portrayed by the para-texts in her postscript. At the threshold of this text, is the literary figure of Okigbo, through the character of the poet Okeoma. Whether for purposes of verisimilitude or literary archiving, the reprisal of the Okigboan imaginary within this textual landscape is more than just an intertextual process – it foregrounds the role of literary imagination within this imagined community of the Igbo nation. 101 Okeoma‟s performances became templates of action, even speech- acts, from where the soul of an emergent Biafran nation-state was envisioned. At the apex of Ugwu‟s literacy, coinciding with the advent of this emergent nation, the kernel of the spirit of secession is captured in his knowledge of Okeoma (read Okigbo‟s) poetry Fora moment Ugwu heard nothing – perhaps Olanna too had walked out – and then he heard Okeoma reading. Ugwu knew the poem If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise. The Elsewhere, Dan Ojwang‟ (2009) refers to Christopher Okigbo, an eminent Nigerian poet who was killed in the Biafran battlefront, having dropped the pen for the gun, as part of intellectual intervention in the advent of the Biafran war. See Kenyan Intellectuals and the Political Realm Responsibilities and Complicities” in Africa Insight Vol. 39 (1):22-38. 159 first time Okeoma read it, the same day the Renaissance newspaper was renamed the Biafran Sun, Ugwu had listened and felt buoyed by it, by his favourite line, Clay pots fired in Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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