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Articles

CJLS: Vol. 6 No. 1, June, 2018

Violence and Subordination: Reinforcing Voices of a Cohesive Vision in three Contemporary Nigerian Novels

  • Ethel Ngozi Okeke
Submitted
June 11, 2018
Published
2018-06-11

Abstract

Black writing has become something of a cohesive project: a response to the common experience of racial inequality, and a united concern to be free from White domination. The African literary forebears established an aesthetic which demands not only commitment to craft, but also to the “big social and political issues†of the society. From a postcolonial theoretical viewpoint, this paper argues that Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and Atta’s Everything Good Will Come engage the big, weighty, serious theme of abusive power relations between the ruling class and the citizens. Adichie, Habila, and Atta in these novels keep faith with the standard for the African writer’s commitment by intervening in the plight of their people. Thus, they reinforce the tradition of their literary forebears evident in their position against oppressive governance, characterized by violence and subordination, both in the colonial and the post-colonial periods of Nigerian history. This article is a textual commentary as well as critical notes on the novels.