The Indigenous Structures of Narrative in Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Journal of Language and Translation

دوره 11، شماره 2، تیر 2021، صفحه 195-211   

نوع مقاله: Research Articles

شناسه دیجیتال (DOI): 10.30495/ttlt.2021.682817

نویسنده

Najmeh Ghabeli^*

Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Payam-e-Noor University, Department of Foreign Languages, Tehran, Iran

چکیده

The influence of the Igbo indigenous culture is of structural significance to the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an African female novelist from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria.  The present article studies the effects and reflections of the Igbo oral heritage in the language and narrative structure of Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun as a significant cultural phenomenon at the hand of the Igbo female novelist to create a discourse of counter-identification with that of the colonial and/or patriarchal discourse. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues, ‘the epistemic violence’ of colonialism has long silenced the voices of the subaltern women. Her postcolonial feminist theory of the cultural difference, which calls for a self-conscious un-learning of the Eurocentric theories and focusing on the cultural specificities of the Third World women, serves as the backbone of the present study. The textual strategies of recursion and revision, as defined by Karla F.C. Holloway, are employed in this novel to re-read the palimpsest of the non-recognized history of the subaltern African woman. This novel provides a space where these silenced voices can be heard throughout using the strategies mentioned above. Adichie emphasizes the indigenous Igbo cultural factors informing the self-image and development of the identity of the subaltern woman in post-independent Nigeria under violent militarism, civil war, and ethnic fanaticism. The study of the novel reveals the significant influence of the Igbo oral heritage not only in the language but also in the narrative structure of the novel.

کلیدواژه‌ها

African feminism؛ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie؛ Igbo؛ Indigenous culture؛ Oral culture؛ Spivak؛ Subaltern woman