Abstract
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) is a historical novel dealing with the Biafran War and constitutes a literary work of symbolic national identity formation. This chapter investigates Adichie’s storytelling methods to establish the ways in which her novel symbolically contributes to a collective Nigerian identity. She tells a story of the Biafran War from a Nigerian/Biafran perspective and thus performs a literary remapping of the country’s history. The narrative importance of the characters allows a reading of the novel both in terms of national allegory and as a realistic account of people affected by war.
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Notes
- 1.
This is the revised version of a chapter originally published as ‘“Teach Them Our History”: Nigerian Identity Formation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun’ (Feldner 2016).
- 2.
While critics have approached this question, and explained some aspects of Adichie’s project, no extensive collections of the rhetorical and literary devices Adichie uses have been presented so far. Krishnan (2013, 196) mentions certain “rhetorical techniques that together address an imagined collectivity”, without elaborating on these techniques. Coffey (2014) presents an intriguing and valuable allegorical reading of the characters Olanna and Kainene, but mainly focuses on this one aspect and ignores important others.
- 3.
Bryce (2008, 61, original emphasis) notes that although “the ‘Biafran novel’ has been something of a rite of passage for Nigerian writers of the two previous generations, Adichie is the first to approach it entirely as historical fiction”.
- 4.
Hodges (2009, 11) argues, for example, that the “legacy of the Biafran War (itself the legacy of colonial policy) continues to shape life in Nigeria. Occasionally, Half of a Yellow Sun makes the connections more or less explicit.”
- 5.
Despite justified accusations of generalization and other criticisms that have been mounted against Jameson’s essay (see especially Ahmad 1992, 95–122), his concept of the ‘national allegory’ is still useful enough to be retained.
- 6.
Janice Spleth (2017, 129) notes that in “Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie chooses to confront civil strife in Nigerian largely through the eyes of Biafra’s civilian population. The author thus refuses the familiar heroic war narrative […], replacing the traditional battlefield as her centre of interest with the domestic space of family life, which, if rarely the site of key military engagements, proves highly effective in illustrating the changing fortunes of a people at war.”
- 7.
In the sections narrating Ugwu’s time as a soldier, Half of a Yellow Sun taps into the genre of the child soldier narrative. Notable recent examples of this genre include Dulue Mbachu’s War Games (2005), Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2005), and Chris Abani’s Song for Night. A Novella (2007).
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Feldner, M. (2019). Biafra and Nigerian Identity Formation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). In: Narrating the New African Diaspora. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05743-5_3
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