ABSTRACT
This study is a feminist Appraisal of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. This research investigates how the authors project the female voice(s) in their writings; exploring how Unigwe, a Nigerian-Belgian feminist writer suggests a new vision where women collaborate in liberation efforts to break the walls of patriarchy. A study of Agary’s text reveals an in-depth examination of the challenges and sex politics that affect the peaceful co-existence of women in the oil-rich Niger Delta where the White workers expose the Niger Delta young ladies to single-parenthood as a result of both sexual and oil exploitation. Technically speaking therefore, African women writers often grapple with neo-colonialism, racism, misrule, poverty, gender bias, ethnic animosity, religious fundamentalism, famine and misrepresentation in the society as well as in male-authored texts. In confronting these social challenges, they have created stories that seek to explore the unique condition of women in the society. In our efforts to examine the political and patriarchal motifs mingled with gender issues in the two novels, this therefore concludes that the paper traces the trend of subjugation, marginalization of women and outline strategies the authors employ in fighting patriarchy and to reveal the authors’ visions on gender.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title Page – – – – – – – – – i
Declaration – – – – – – – – – ii
Certification – – – – – – – – – iii
Dedication – – – – – – – – – iv
Acknowledgements – – – – – – – – v
Abstract – – – – – – – – – vi
Table of Content – – – – – – – – vii
CHAPTER ONE
Background of the Study – – – – – – 1
1.1 Synopsis of the Novels – – – – – – 3
Background of the Authors – – – – – – 4
Statement of the Problem – – – – – – 5
Aim and Objectives of the Study – – – – – 6
Significance of the Study – – – – – – 7
Methodology – – – – – – – – 7
Scope/Delimitation of the Study – – – – – 7
Theoretical Framework – – – – – – 7
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Feminist concerns/appraisal in literary imaginations – – – 10
2.2. Literary review – – – – – – – 13
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 Gender Issues in Unigwe’s on Black Sisters’ Street – – – 17
3.1 Unigwe’s Projection of Gender Bias and Female Submission – 17
3.2 The Projection of Patriarchal Practice of Sex Trafficking – – 20
3.3 Perpetual Violence, Rape and the Gendered Effect – – – 23
CHAPTER FOUR: THE GENDERED ENVIRONMENT
4.1. Agary’s Projection of a Debased African Woman – – – 27
4.2. The Projection of Motherhood/Single-Parenthood – – – 31
4.3. Agary’s Projection of Patriarchy and Sex Politics – – – 35
4.4. Resilience and Self-awareness – – – – – 38
CHAPTER FIVE
5.1. Comparative Analysis of Chika Unigwe’s on Black
Sisters’ Street and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow – – – 40
5.2. Authorship – – – – – – – – 40
5.3. Characterization – – – – – – – 42
5.4. Setting – – – – – – – – – 43
5.5. Themes – – – – – – – – 43
5.6 Conclusion – – – – – – – – 48
CHAPTER ONE
Background of the Study
The new phase in which the oppression of women by men and the representation of women in literature is the subject of considerable literary discourse and analysis by the women’s movement and men who seek to improve not only the collective women’s condition but the quality of their lives. In this vein, one recognizes that the goal of any movement to end oppression whether of women or of blacks generally, first and foremost prioritizes the welfare of all those oppressed and for this reason the feminist appraisal of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow takes the center stage. According to Peter White, appraisal is understood as a “particular approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positioning and relationships” (1). Chika Unigwe and Kaine Agary use their novels, On Black Sisters’ Street and Yellow Yellow to look at issues that bothers the female gender. It is also a reflection of the pains, joys, travails and triumph of women, wives, womanhood and the intriguing relationship that characterizes family life. Like other books which portray people’s life, culture, beliefs and practices like Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter, Nawal El-Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, to mention just a few, the two novels which are our focus in this study will try to reveal the evil of patriarchy in the society, its manifestation in the society and how it will be overcome.
Hence, the two authors try to examine womanist and feminists tenets that appraise women aimed at ending oppression and subjugation as the two authors used their novels to bring to fore levels of oppression, patriarchy and gender politics that masquerade in African cultural setting carefully designed and introduced by men to exploit women in order to satisfy their selfish interest. There are practices like patriarchy, child-marriages, forced marriage and prostitution which negatively affect and devalue women which feminist scholars have always tried to point out in their novels.
According to Shodipe Mojishola, “women are excluded from positions of power and policy making and are reduced to the role of dancing and Aso-ebi wearers at political allies.” (34) This is because the society sees women as second class citizens who should not have anything to do with politics.
Hence, Mary Wollstonecraft says that:
Women are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes in the patriarchal society. Hence, the minds of women are not in a healthy state because they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings and not as human species… (7)
This means that women are victimized psychologically, mentally and emotionally.
Consequently, since primordial times, one has witnessed that women have always suffered many hardships from the family circle to the public sphere and this is because they are considered inferior to men. In most traditions especially in Africa, women are devalued and considered “second-class citizens” just like Buchi Emecheta tries to point out in her novel, Second Class Citizens. Again, Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex believes that “women are constructed by men as passive and inconsequential objects” (1). Akachi Ezeigbo in her reaction contends that “this trend has resulted in the perpetuation of female self-effacement and self-erasure which have insidiously demeaned womanhood for a long time”. (16). It is often said that men are the subject of history, they determine concepts and create structures for others to adhere to and this is highly documented in the two novels which are our focus in the study as well as other feminist works like Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, The Joys of Motherhood, Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter, to mention just a few. Men make all the rules and also try to maintain the aged-long traditions like polygamy, early or child marriages and prostitution which they structured and positioned into the society for their selfish interests to the detriment of the female counterparts.
1.1 Synopsis of the Novels
Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street
Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street relates the harrowing experiences of four African sex workers who share an apartment in Belgium. Three of the girls – Sisi, Efe and Ama – are Nigerians, while Joyce, the fourth girl, is a Sudanese. Although the novel opens with Sisi, the leading female character, relishing thoughts of new beginnings, the reader realises before long that she has been jobless for many years, even after having graduated from a renowned university. Efe, nicknamed the ‘Imelda Marcos of wigs’ because of her passion for high-heeled shoes and wig, is abandoned by her old lover soon after she got pregnant for him. Sexually abused night after night by her stepfather, Ama is forced to leave Enugu for Lagos, where she is taken in by an aunt who runs a canteen. And Joyce, having been gang-raped by militias in Sudan, has her heart crushed completely, when her Nigerian army boyfriend dumps her because he is not brave enough to fight off ethnic sentiments. In a bid to escape their personal tragedies in Nigeria, the four girls, with the help of a loud-mouthed pimp, relocate to Belgium separately, where they believe they could start a new life altogether. The pimp’s help, however, turns out to be the ‘devil’s gift’, which entails grim consequences and proves fatal for one of the girls.
Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow
Agary’s novel Yellow Yellow centers on the protagonist, Zilayefa who waits for the messiah that is to take her out of degradation, want and backwardness but what she sees is rejection and abandonment. Her mother before her has to wait for the Greek sailor but ‘he left Port Harcourt without saying goodbye…no message. He was just gone, leaving behind his planted seed in Zilayefa’s mother’s belle. Her father abandons her, left her with her mother to live a life of quiet desperation and so she dreams of finding a prince charming that will come in shining amour and take her away from the colourless, backward and empty existence to a place where she will be seen for her worth. ‘I did not care as much as she did about finishing school; I just wanted to leave the village’ she said. Bibi, Zilayefa’s mother is said to have had her life well planned out, migrating from the rural area to the urban center. She had dream of moving up the ladder in life and this dream is given stamp when she meets her Greek Merchant/sailor boyfriend. Like some women of her time and place, this dream is aborted with abandonment and unwanted pregnancy. Mama Ebiye is a happy-go-lucky village woman with four boys, no girl-child and for this reason; she “spoils” any girl that she likes. One of such girls is Zilayefa whom she had taken to Port Harcourt for shopping. Young people usually converge on her porch for merriment in the evenings. The women in the village wear different degrading images as they are either, typically local or have gone out before but are disillusioned with the reality of urban life.
Background of the Authors
Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe is Nigerian-Belgian writer who has written a good number of satirical columns one of which is entitled “How to Write about Africa” (2005), and which is also digitally available as “How to be an African,” albeit in revised form. In this column, Unigwe writes that before coming to Europe she had no clear idea of what it meant to be black, suggesting that she did not experience race to be the defining social identity in Nigeria. She goes on to describe with great irony what she has learned about blackness since living in Europe. “I now learn that being black means that I am perceived as a charity project. That I must be grateful for the opportunity granted to me to be in Europe.” These lessons further include dressing in an authentically African way, always to be prepared for police control or to be able to dance. Stating that blackness has no connotation on its own, but is assigned meaning from the outside, Unigwe’s Becoming Black in Seven Lessons reminds us of the social construction of blackness.
