(Re)Fashioning Biafra: Identity, Authorship, and the Politics of Dress in <em>Half of a Yellow Sun</em> and Other Narratives of the Nigeria-Biafra War

Abstract

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's second novel, Half of a Yellow (2006), is one in a long line of works by Nigerian authors to portray the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967)(1968)(1969)(1970). While Adichie has stated that she wanted to make modern Nigeria aware of its history by writing the novel, the writer has also revealed that she drew from past literary portrayals to construct her narrative.

Gender and the politics of war historiography in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra

“…The novel’s hopes for one multi-ethnic nation, embodied in its half Itsekiri, half Igbo protagonist, is clear - although it bears examining, as Matthew Lecznar points out, how Emecheta suggests Debbie sometimes performs “the fissures between [her] personal, cultural and national identities” strategically (Lecznar, 2017: 120). Her protagonist’s mixed ethnicity nonetheless co-exists with the novel’s uncertainties about the nation-state form, particularly where the latter is styled and imposed by a departing colonial power.…”