Academic literature on the topic 'Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi'

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2017v37n2p318Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, escritora nigeriana, conhecida por seus textos feministas, se inscreve num feminismo que trava uma luta contra um preconceito orgânico que entre outras coisas, promove o apagamento da mulher como pessoa na sociedade. Ela assume o papel da alteridade ao dar vida a personagens diferentes de si, mas ao mesmo tempo iguais a ela por serem mulheres. Em seu discurso We should all be feminists para o canal TEDEux, Adichie, a partir de história de sua vida, traz reflexões sobre o que é ser mulher na Nigéria e no mundo contemporâneo. Esse mesmo olhar é delicadamente traduzido por Chritiane Baum como Sejamos todos feministas.

Famous Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie believes that the role of literature is to instruct and delight. Her realist literary creation focuses on Nigeria’s post-colonial cultural and political reconstruction, as well as race, gender and class in a cross-cultural context, which reflects her Igbo, Nigerian and African “sensibility” and a certain cosmopolitan stance. The present article comprehensively investigates Adichie’s views on literature, creative practice and the dissemination and acceptance of her works to achieve an in-depth understanding of the writer.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, Florianópolis, 2016.
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O romance Half of a Yellow Sun, de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, apresenta foco narrativo onisciente, em terceira pessoa, priorizando o ponto de vista de três personagens: Richard um inglês que não se identifica com a Inglaterra e se muda para a Nigéria, interessando-se pela cultura e língua igbo; Ugwu igbo, nascido e criado em uma zona rural na Nigéria, que, ao mudar-se para a cidade, para trabalhar como criado de um professor universitário, termina sua alfabetização em língua inglesa, e Olanna igbo, formada na Inglaterra, que trabalha na Nigéria como professora universitária. Em Half of a Yellow Sun, o leitor é constantemente exposto a diferentes registros da língua inglesa, como o inglês não padrão e o inglês crioulo. O objetivo deste trabalho foi comparar, à luz dos Estudos da Tradução em diálogo e dos Estudos Pós-Coloniais, duas traduções em língua portuguesa de trechos do romance em que há a ocorrência desses registros. Para tal empreendimento, foram selecionadas duas traduções: uma brasileira, de Beth Vieira, e outra portuguesa, de Tânia Ganho. Primeiramente, foi feita uma análise do texto fonte, tendo em vista (i) a percepção intercultural das/dos três personagens mencionadas, no que se refere à negociação local entre as línguas inglesa e igbo, e (ii) a forma como Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie representa este contexto intercultural a partir das três perspectivas. Em seguida, para desenvolver o estudo comparativo entre as traduções selecionadas e texto fonte, foram discutidas as relações de aproximação e afastamento entre o/a escritor(a) pós-colonial e o/a tradutor(a), com foco na dimensão política de ambas as escritas. Por fim, para contrapor o discurso logocêntrico, que toma as traduções por textos inferiores, esta pesquisa associa as relações de poder entre texto original e texto traduzido com as relações de poder entre as culturas envolvidas, denunciando, assim, o discurso opressor e enaltecendo as formas de resistência de cada uma dessas escritas. A intersecção entre os Estudos da Tradução e os Estudos Pós-Coloniais é embasada nas teorias de Spivak, Rajagopalan, Gyasi, Esteves, Tymoczko e Niranjana, que equiparam a literatura pós-colonial à tradução e/ou apresentam as relações de poder que envolvem o ofício do/a tradutor(a). Autores como Venuti e Santiago embasam as críticas referentes aos Estudos da Tradução e aos Estudos Pós-Coloniais, respectivamente.

Abstract : The novel Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is narrated in the third person omniscient point of view and prioritizes the perspective of three characters. Richard is English yet doesn t identify with his country nor with the English people, and moves to Nigeria. He is interested in the Igbo culture and even learns the language. Ugwu is Igbo, born and raised in the countryside of Nigeria. He moves to the city to work as a houseboy in a professor s house, where he becomes literate in English. Olanna is also Igbo and, like her partner, works as a professor. She graduated in England. In Half of a Yellow Sun, the reader is constantly exposed to the English language in different registers, such as non-standard and pidgin English. In light of Translation Studies dialoguing with Post-Colonial Studies, this paper compares two translations to Portuguese of some extracts from the novel in which those kinds of registers occur. In order to do that, two official translations were selected, one from Brazil translated by Beth Vieira, and the other from Portugal translated by Tânia Ganho. First, the source text was analyzed based on (i) the three characters previously mentioned, focusing on their perception of this interculturality and (ii) how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie represents this context through them. To perform a comparative study among the selected translations and the source text, the differences and similarities among the work of a post-colonial writer and that of a translator were presented focusing on the political dimension of both written activities. Finally, to oppose the logocentric discourse, which regards translations as inferior texts, this paper associates the power relations among the original text and the translated one to the power relations among the cultures involved, denouncing the oppressor s discourse and the acts of resistance in each of these texts. The intersection between Translation Studies and Post-Colonial Studies is based on the theories of Spivak, Rajagopalan, Gyasi, Esteves, Tymoczko and Niranjana, which compare post-colonial literature to the translation and/or present the power relations involving the translator s trade. I also use Lawrence Venuti from Translation Studies and Silviano Santiago from Post-Colonial Studies as a basis for my analysis.

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Construímos uma leitura da expressão intelectual da escritora nigeriana Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie no intuito de compreender como seus escritos podem contribuir para ampliar e potencializar discussões referentes ao desmantelamento de histórias únicas da África, a subjugação feminina em contexto nigeriano e a impacto dos estigmas raciais na vida cotidiana estadunidense. Dessa maneira, investigamos como essas temáticas aparecem na prática discursiva da autora através de leituras de cenas de suas narrativas literárias, ensaios acadêmicos e ideias proferidas em palestras e entrevistas. Dialogando com outras vozes negras e/ou africanas como Molara Ogundipe (1992); Achille Mbembe (2001;2007) bell hooks (1984; 1992) entre outras, tecemos um caminho possível para uma análise mais plural sobre as muitas histórias contadas por Adichie e pudemos compreender que seus escritos negros surgem e se configuram dentro de um espaço fronteiriço em que ela precisa conciliar a sua vivência entre EUA e Nigéria lindando com todas as implicações que isso possa lhe trazer. Ademais, compreendemos que a autora reconhece as faces de histórias e personagens sem menosprezá-los, incorpora as diferenças e se vale de pertencimentos, conscientizando a urgência da busca de conhecimento do outro e de lugares, enfatizando a fuga do senso comum e da história única.
We build a reading of the intellectual expression of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in order to understand how her writings can contribute to broaden and strengthen discussions about the dismantling of Africa's unique histories, female subjugation in a Nigerian context and the impact of the racial stigmata in everyday American life. In this way, we investigate how these themes appear in the discursive practice of our author through readings of scenes from her literary narratives, academic essays and ideas delivered in lectures and interviews. Discussing with other black and African voices like Molara Ogundipe (1992); among others, we have woven a possible path for a more plural analysis of the many stories told by Adichie, and we have been able to understand that her black writings arise and form within a frontier space in where she needs to reconcile her experience between the US and Nigeria, bordering on all the implications that this may bring. In addition, we understand that the author recognizes the faces of stories and characters without belittling them, incorporates differences and uses belongings, making aware of the urgency of the search for knowledge of the other and of places, emphasizing the escape of common sense and single stories.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, 2017.
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Purple hibiscus, primeiro livro da escritora nigeriana Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, é um romance de temática feminista sobre a conquista da própria voz e do rompimento com a submissão e o silêncio impostos pelo patriarcado, pela religião e pelo conservadorismo. Tomando por base as teorias da Tradução Feminista, sobretudo de Simon (1996) e Von Flotow (1997 e 2012), investigo de que forma as marcas de feminismo na obra foram abordadas na tradução para o português do Brasil. A pesquisa inicia-se pela biografia da escritora – sua conexão com a literatura pós-colonial e militância feminista –, seguindo para os vários conceitos e vertentes do feminismo. Na sequência, apresento uma análise quali-quantitativa dos termos referentes aos campos lexicais do olhar e do falar no texto de partida, tomados como indicadores do desabrochar da liberdade, e proponho alternativas à tradução de Hibisco roxo, elaboradas com o intuito de reforçar as marcas feministas. Ao final, traço um histórico da Tradução Feminista, indicando novas tendências que estão a florescer. Este trabalho trata sobre a liberdade. Sobre vozes abafadas e inaudíveis que, aos poucos, começam a se fortalecer e a serem notadas, até aflorarem completamente. É uma pesquisa sobre a luta da mulher por independência e visibilidade, em uma sociedade patriarcal que, desde os primórdios, coloca-a em uma posição assessória, inferior e incompleta em si mesma. É sobre a liberdade do ato da tradução, da autonomia da tradutora para fugir da invisibilidade e da submissão, de manipular o texto e fazer sua voz ser ouvida pelo leitor. E é também sobre o processo de conquista da liberdade pelos personagens de Purple hibiscus, e de como essa conquista está associada à militância feminista de sua autora.
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple hibiscus, is a feminist-themed novel about the conquest of one’s own voice and the break with submission and silence imposed by patriarchy, religion, and conservatism. Based on Feminist Translation theories, especially on Simon (1996) and Von Flotow (1997 and 2012), I investigate how the translator approached the feminist marks in the Brazilian Portuguese version. First, the research presents the writer’s biography, underscoring her connection to postcolonial literature and feminist militancy. Next, the various concepts and strands of feminism are discussed. After that, I present a quali-quantitative analysis of terms belonging to the lexical fields look and speech in the starting text, considered to be indicators of the blooming of freedom. In an attempt to intentionally reinforce the feminist marks in the text, I present alternatives to that translation of Purple hibiscus. Finally, I provide a brief background of Feminist Translation, presenting new trends that are flourishing. This work is about freedom. It is about muffled and inaudible voices that, little by little, became louder, until they finally flourished. It is a research on the struggle of women for independence and visibility in a patriarchal society which, from the earliest stages, places women in an inferior and secondary position. It is about the freedom of translation and the autonomy of the translator to fight invisibility and submission and to manipulate the text in order to make his/her voice heard by the reader. And it is also about the liberation of Purple hibiscus oppressed characters, and the connections between their freedom and the author’s feminist militancy.

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
A literatura africana, em sua poeticidade insubmissa, tem proporcionado abertura de espaços nos quais a configuração heterogênea dos países africanos estabelece as bases propícias para uma reflexão crítica do papel da literatura no mundo contemporâneo. A literatura escrita por mulheres emerge a partir das desleituras dos sujeitos subalternos silenciados, em um movimento que ressalta a especificidade subjetiva, ao passo que intensifica a desconstrução promovida pela produção artística periférica. Localizando nesse contexto a criação literária das mulheres africanas, evidencia-se o questionamento aos aparatos opressivos, diante da escrita que reúne tradição ancestral e herança colonial no labirinto das negociações culturais fundantes. Em meio a uma nova ordem mundial, na qual os direitos humanos estão sendo a cada dia oprimidos, silenciados, voltamo-nos à voz feminina articulada pelo texto literário de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Em um território marcado pela violência e pelo machismo, a jovem escritora nigeriana avulta uma crítica incisiva à subalternidade do sujeito feminino na literatura. Por meio de um discurso que traduz aspectos da cultura nigeriana e americana, Adichie contesta a condição opressiva imposta à mulher pelo poder hegemônico masculinizado. Em virtude da multiplicidade observada na caracterização da mulher nigeriana, em poética embebida de sinestesias, apresenta-se uma análise da coletânea de contos A coisa à volta do teu pescoço (2012), ao se abordar as problemáticas que incidem nas personagens. Considera-se para isso uma conjuntura histórica e cultural que revela na forma de contar o anseio de as mulheres protagonizarem um destino histórico de silenciamento. Nessa perspectiva, inqueriu-se sobre os papéis de gênero e os elementos interseccionais – como raça, classe, discurso, poder, instâncias culturais – que traduzem um diálogo trans-semiótico com as questões de gênero. Ao se trabalhar com conceitos culturais inacabados, constata-se que a transgressão dos lugares opressivos reservados à mulher nigeriana ainda são mínimos. Observou-se também como a formação de uma consciência crítica que permita uma revisão da situação de violência e exclusão da mulher ainda é um grande desafio no início do século XXI. Como base para as considerações, e por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica, seguiu-se pelos caminhos das teorias literárias de cunho feminista de acordo com as reflexões de Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2014), Angela Y. Davis (2016) e Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2015), esta última, no que concerne ao seu pensar acerca da cultura, unindo consciência política ao trabalho estético.
African Literature, in its unsubmissive poeticity, has proportionate the opening spaces where heterogeneous configuration from the African countries lays the foundations for the critical reflection about the role of literature in contemporary world. Literature written by women emerges from unlearnings of silenced subalterns subjects, across a movement that stands out subjective specificity, awhile intensifies deconstruction promoted by peripheral artistic production. Located in this context, literary creation of African women, is evident the questions around oppressive devices before writing that meets ancestral tradition and colonial heritage into the maze of negotiations of cultural foundations. In between a new world order, which human rights are oppressed every day, silenced, we return to female voice articulated by the literary text of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In a territory marked by violence and male chauvinism, the young Nigerian writer emphasizes an incisive criticism to the subalternity of female subject in literature. By means of a speech that translates aspects of American and Nigerian culture, Adichie answers the oppressive condition imposed to woman by the hegemonic male power. By virtue of observed multiplicity on Nigerian woman description, in poetic embedded in synesthesia, presents an analysis of a collection of short stories The thing around your neck (2012), approaching problematics focused on the characters. It is considered for that a cultural and historical conjuncture which reveals in its form of telling the women’s urge to protagonize a historic destiny of silencing. In this perspective, it was inquired about gender roles and the intersectional elements – such as race, class, discourse, power, cultural instances – that translate a trans-semiotic dialogue with gender issues. While working with unfinished cultural concepts, it is verified that transgression of oppressive places reserved to Nigerian woman are minimal. It was also verified how a critical awareness formation that permits a review of the situation of violence and exclusion of woman is still a great challenge in the beginning of XXI century. As a basis of our considerations, and through bibliographic research, we follow the paths of feminist literary theories according to reflections of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2014), Angela Y. Davis (2016) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2015), the latest, as far as her thinking about culture, uniting political consciousness to aesthetic work.

In Purple Hibiscus, Adichie describes what happens in a family when one person, Papa Eugene, takes control and completely subjugates other family members to his wishes and demands. The author shows the dire consequences his actions have on his family but also how those actions ultimately lead to his own destruction. This essay links the restrictions and abuse suffered by Kambili and her family to Michel Foucault’s theories on torture and surveillance as detailed in Discipline and Punish. Foucault’s theories are linked to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in order to further introduce the concept of surveillance. The essay describes the physical and psychological abuse suffered by the family and also details the surveillance and torture techniques used by Papa Eugene to stay in control. Moreover, it argues that power can be lost through applying too much control and by metering out punishment that is too harsh and it shows how such actions ultimately lead to rebellion.

Recently new novels about the Biafra war have appeared, proving the ongoing impact of the Nigerian civil war on writers’ interest, and the importance of memory in our life. For all these reasons, I decided to write the present thesis on how memory function in a literary work. The objective is to analyse the literary representation of the Biafra war, with a special focus on individual and collective memory production through two fictional novels: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Under the Udala Trees, by Chinelo Okparanta. In analysing the literary representations of Biafra in the light of memory studies, I have identified two levels of memory: literary characters’ memory and writers’ memory. Focusing on the level of the memory of the characters, I explored what the characters remember about the Biafra war both when the war is over and when it is still in progress, and what strategies they use to remember or to forget painful memories of the war.  What emerged through this first level of analysis is how Adichie and Okparanta have offered narratives focused not only on accounts of the war, but also on feelings and emotions. Moreover, the strategies of remembering and of forgetting represent tools of survival, and they are not in a relationship of exclusion. Focusing on the level of writers’ memory, I explored the perspectives used by Adichie and Okparanta to narrate and remember the Biafra war: a perspective from below, focused on ordinary people and on their daily lives; a female perspective which represents a novelty in a literary landscape dominated by male writers; the danger of a single story and its risk to create hegemonic narratives; the fictional perspective as a way to enrich a historical event with suggestive details fruit of writers’ imagination; the Afropolitan perspective and the greater openness of mind of the new generation of African writers.

Migration and its consequences are often discussed in contemporary postcolonial discussions. This topic of migration is central in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Adichie’s portrayal of the migrating subject has placed her in the center of the Afropolitan discussion about transnational Africans and their right to represent. This essay aims to bring this discussion to light. Furthermore, with the use of Benedict Anderson’s ideas of nations as imagined communities, Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism, and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry, this essay intends to illuminate the colonial discourse of Americanah’s America. I argue that the novel’s protagonist Ifemelu’s migration to the land of the free is bordered by remnants of colonial discourse, placing her within a western array of marginalization. As Ifemelu struggles with issues connected to her migration into a culture that marginalizes and discriminates under the proud flag of “the American Dream,” she is forced to resort to mimicry of western traits, to get access to western privilege. I contend that the mimicry of western traits consequently reduces her presence in America to partial.

My dissertation interrogates Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s representation of African women in her literary oeuvre. I argue that her female characters bear witness to intersecting oppressions of African women portraying them as being extremely marginalized at home and lacking achievable alternate homes. This study also interrogates Adichie’s feminist philosophy and posits that she typically agitates for equality for all regardless of sex, gender, race, and/or other defining identities. Lastly, I argue that Adichie uses the practice of the African novel to rewrite the character of African women in African literature where her uniqueness hinges on her interrogation of the place of Africans in contemporary world culture, in turn, uses the novel to critique society’s hierarchies of privilege and oppression and of stereotypical representation of Africa and Africans in the world arena.

Le thème de la guerre civile au Nigéria de 1967 à 1970, aussi appelée guerre du Biafra reste un thème majeur de la littérature nigériane. Les évènements qui ont amené au conflit au lendemain de l’indépendance du pays montrent une période post-coloniale encore marquée par les maux de la construction nationale des anciennes colonies que sont le régionalisme, la religion et le problème ethnique. La fin du conflit en 1970 inaugure une ère de mutation des problèmes d’avant la guerre qui perdurent avec la succession des différents régimes au pouvoir. De plus, le conflit devient un sujet tabou à effacer des mémoires autant que de la mémoire collective nigeriane.Après la première vague des écrivains à majorité Igbo qui ont écrit sur le conflit, tels que Chukwuemeka Ike avec Sunset at Dawn (1979), Buchi Emecheta (1983), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reprend le thème de cette guerre sans apologie. Cette nouvelle façon d’écrire le sujet de la guerre du Biafra se veut thérapeutique et réconciliatrice.Ce travail analyse le traitement de la guerre du Biafra à travers le prisme de la Déesse Mammy Water, divinité de la cosmologie Igbo. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appartient à la communauté Igbo
The theme of the Nigerian civil war which lasted from 1967 to 1970, also called the Biafra war remains one of the major theme of the nigerian literature. The events that led to the war after the country’s independance point to a post-colonial period where national building is still worked up on along ethnic and religious lines. In 1970, the end of the conflict starts a new era still affected by all the issues that led to the war still visible in the different regimes leading the federation. Moreover, the conflict became a taboo topic that needed to be erased from individual as well as the nigerian collective memory.After the first wave of writers mainly from Igbo descent who wrote about the war such as Chukwuemeka Ike with Sunset at Dawn (1979), Buchi Emecheta (1983), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie takes up the theme of the war unapologetically. Her way of writing the war ultimately wants to be the therapeutical and inclusive for all nigerians.This study analyzes the Biafran war through the prism of Mammy Water, the water goddess in the Igbo cosmology. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie belongs to the Igbo community

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis puts the fiction of Zoë Wicomb and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie into conversation with particular reference to three issues: authorship, history and gender. Apart from anything else, what Wicomb and Adichie have in common is an interest in the representation of marginalised or minority ethnic groups within the nation - the coloured people in the case of Wicomb, and the Igbo in the case of Adichie. Yet what both writers also have in common is that neither seems to advocate the reification of these ethnic groups in reformulations of nationalist discourse. The thesis argues that through their focus on various forms of marginality, both Wicomb and Adichie destabilise traditional notions of nation, authorship, history, gender identity, the boundary between domestic and public life, and the idea of “home”. The thesis focuses on four main topics, each of which is covered in a chapter: the question of authorial voice in relation to history; perspectives offered by women characters in relation to oppressive or traumatic historical moments; oppressive or traumatic histories intruding into the intimate domestic space; and the issue of transnational migration and its (un)homely effects. Employing concepts of metafiction and mise-en-abyme self-reflexivity, the study begins by considering the ways in which Wicomb’s David’s Story and Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun both reflect on the idea of authorship. Focusing on the ways in which each text draws the reader into witnessing authorship, the thesis argues that the two novels can be put into conversation as they both stage dilemmas about authorship in relation to those marginalised by national histories. Following on from this idea of marginalisation by nationalist histories, the thesis then proceeds to examine both writers’ foregrounding of women’s stories that are set in oppressive and/or violent historical times – under apartheid in the case of Wicomb’s You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, and during the Biafran war in the case of Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Utilising ideas about gender, history and literary history by Tiyambe Zeleza, Florence Stratton and Elleke Boehmer, the study analyses how, beginning with father-daughter relationships, Wicomb and Adichie wean their female characters from their fathers’ control so that they may begin telling their own stories that complicate and subvert the stories that their fathers represent. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s theory of “the uncanny” and Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial reading of that theory, the study then turns to discuss the ways in which oppressive national histories become manifest in domestic spaces (that are usually marginalised in national histories), turning those spaces into unhomely homes, in Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. In both novels, purity (whether racial or religious) is cultivated in the family home, but this cultivation of purity, which is reflected symbolically in the kinds of gardens each family grows, evidently has “unhomely” effects that signal the return of the repressed, of that which is disavowed in discourses of purity. Since both Wicomb and Adichie are African-born women authors living abroad, and since the “unhomely” aspects of transnational existence are reflected upon in their fiction, the study finally considers the forms of marginality to the national posed by the migrant. Transnational migration is examined in Wicomb’s The One That Got Away and in Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, placing stories from these two recently published sets of short stories into dialogue.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis plaas die fiksie van Zoë Wicomb en Chimamandi Ngozi Adichie in gesprek met mekaar, met verwysing na veral drie sake: outeurskap, geskiedenis en geslag (gender). Afgesien van ander kwessies het die fiksie van Wicomb en Adichie ‘n belangstelling in die fiktiewe voorstelling van gemarginaliseerde of minderheidsgroepe in die nasie in gemeen – die kleurlinggroep in die geval van Wicomb en die Igbo in die geval van Adichie. Nogtans beveel geeneen van hierdie twee skrywers ‘n reïfikasie van nasionalistiese diskoers aan nie. Die tesis voer aan dat, deur hulle fokus op verskeie vorme van marginaliteit, beide Wicomb en Adichie tradisionele konsepte van nasionalisme, skrywer-skap, geskiedenis, geslagsidentiteit, die grens tussen private en publieke lewe en die idee van ‘n eie tuiste destabiliseer. Die vier hoof-onderwerpe van die tesis is word elk in ‘n eie hoofstuk behandel: die kwessie van ‘n skrywerstem in verhouding tot die geskiedenis; perspektiewe wat belig word deur vrouekarakters in kontekste van onderdrukkende of traumatiese historiese momente; hoedat onderdrukkings- of traumatiese geskiedenisse die private sfeer binnedring; asook die kwessie van ‘n migrasie oor landsgrense en die ontheimingseffek hiervan. Deur die gebruik van metafisiese en mise-en-abyme selfrefleksie begin die studie deur te reflekteer op hoe Wicomb se David’s Story en Adichie se Half of a Yellow Sun [aangaande] die idee van outeurskap reflekteer. Deur te fokus op die wyses waarop beide tekste die leser betrek om skrywerskap waar te neem, voer die tesis aan dat die twee romans met mekaar in gesprek geplaas kan word, terwyl albei dilemmas van outeurskap met betrekking tot diegene wat in nasionale geskiedskrywing gemarginaliseer word, sentraal plaas. Volgende op hierdie kwessie gaan die tesis dan voort om albei skrywers se vooropstelling van vroue se verhale gesitueer in onderdrukkende of gewelddadige tye – onder apartheid in die geval van Wicomb se You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town en gedurende die Biafraanse oorlog in Adichie se Half of a Yellow Sun – te ondersoek. Met behulp van idees aangaande gender, geskiedenis en literêre geskiedenis van Tiyambe Zeleza, Florence Stratton en Elleke Boehmer, analiseer die tesis hoedat, beginnende met vader-dogter verhoudings, Wicomb en Adichie hul vroulike karakters loswikkel van hul vaders se kontrole sodat hulle kan begin om hul eie verhale te vertel – stories wat die verhale van hul vaders kompliseer en ondermyn. Met behulp van Sigmund Freud se teorie van die onheimlike en Homi Bhabha se postkolonialistiese interpretasie van daardie idee, gaan die tesis dan voort deur maniere waarop onderdrukkende nasionale geskiedenisse in die tuis-ruimtes (wat gewoonlik deur nasionale geskiedskrywing gemarginaliseer word) manifesteer, met die onheimlike effek hiervan op die tuisruimte – beide in Wicomb se Playing in the Light en in Adichie se Purple Hibiscus – te ondersoek. In albei romans word reinheid ( van ras of geloof) in die familie-tuiste gekultiveer, maar hierdie nadruk op reinheid – simbolies gereflekteer in die tuine wat deur albei gesinne aangelê word – het wel onmiskenbare onheimlike gevolge wat die terugkeer van wat onderdruk is (in die naam van reinheid) aandui. Omdat beide Wicomb en Adichie vroue-skrywers is wat in Afrika gebore is maar oorsee lewe, en omdat die onheimlike aspekte van ‘n transnasionale lewensstyl in hul fiksie oorweeg word, beskryf die tesis die vorms van marginaliteit met betrekking tot die nasionale wat deur die migrant tot stand kom. Transnasionale migrasie word in Wicomb se The One that Got Away en Adichie se The Thing around your Neck oorweeg, wat die verhale uit hierdie twee versamelings in gesprek met mekaar plaas.