Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: The African Novel in the 21st Century: Sustaining the Gains of the 20th Century
- ARTICLES
- Resurgent Spirits, Catholic Echoes of Igbo & Petals of Purple: The Syncretised World of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus
- Ambivalent Inscriptions: Women, Youth & Diasporic Identity in Buchi Emecheta's Later Fiction
- The Interrupted Dance: Racial Memory in Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name
- The Ivorian Crisis & Ahmadou Kourouma's Posthumous Political Novel Quand on Refuse on dit non
- Ngũgĩ's Wizard of the Crow: Women as the “Voice of the People” & the Western Audience
- The Ankh & Maat: Symbols of Successful Revolution in Ayi Kwei Armah's Osiris Rising
- A New African Youth Novel in the Era of HIV/AIDS: An Analysis of Unity Dow's Far & Beyon'
- The Prison of Nigerian Woman: Female Complicity in Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come
- Manufacturing Skin for Somalia's History: Nuruddin Farah's Deep Hurt in Links
- A Zimbabwean Ethic of Humanity: Tsitsi Dangarembga's The Book of Not & the Unhu Philosophy of Personhood
- ‘Coming to America’: Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale & the Nigerian/African Immigrant's Narrative
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun
- REVIEW
- Index
Ambivalent Inscriptions: Women, Youth & Diasporic Identity in Buchi Emecheta's Later Fiction
from ARTICLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: The African Novel in the 21st Century: Sustaining the Gains of the 20th Century
- ARTICLES
- Resurgent Spirits, Catholic Echoes of Igbo & Petals of Purple: The Syncretised World of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus
- Ambivalent Inscriptions: Women, Youth & Diasporic Identity in Buchi Emecheta's Later Fiction
- The Interrupted Dance: Racial Memory in Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name
- The Ivorian Crisis & Ahmadou Kourouma's Posthumous Political Novel Quand on Refuse on dit non
- Ngũgĩ's Wizard of the Crow: Women as the “Voice of the People” & the Western Audience
- The Ankh & Maat: Symbols of Successful Revolution in Ayi Kwei Armah's Osiris Rising
- A New African Youth Novel in the Era of HIV/AIDS: An Analysis of Unity Dow's Far & Beyon'
- The Prison of Nigerian Woman: Female Complicity in Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come
- Manufacturing Skin for Somalia's History: Nuruddin Farah's Deep Hurt in Links
- A Zimbabwean Ethic of Humanity: Tsitsi Dangarembga's The Book of Not & the Unhu Philosophy of Personhood
- ‘Coming to America’: Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale & the Nigerian/African Immigrant's Narrative
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun
- REVIEW
- Index
Summary
African diaspora subjects articulate identities constructed far away from their homelands or motherlands both in fiction and critical theory. Besides the African Americans and the Afro-Caribbeans, the African diaspora includes long-term voluntary or forced exiles and new immigrants of African descent in other parts of the world. A black diaspora emerged in Britain gathering members of the already constituted African Caribbean diaspora and emigrants from Africa. Their presence has generated a rich literature – creative as well as expository – that explores the implications of settlement in the mother country, and translates the formation of an imagined identity away from the land of origin or the motherland.
Buchi Emecheta's fiction is one useful locus to consider such an experience, especially her later novels, Kehinde and The New Tribe. Therein home and belonging are problematized in the life stories of the main protagonists. Of course, as customary in Emecheta's work, gender relations are inscribed in the process, and more so in Kehinde. This paper intends to explore the relationships of the migrant subjects to home, namely the motherland. Such an inquiry is based on the development of the concept ‘home’ from Gwendolen or The Family to these two later works. It seeks to pursue an earlier reflection on the subject that focused on Gwendolen and the Rape of Shavi.
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- Chapter
- Information
- New Novels in African Literature Today , pp. 13 - 27Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009