Betwixt and Between: Negotiating Parental Abandonment and Family Life in Sade Adeniran ' s Imagine This
Abstract
Using African feminist and post-colonial theories, this paper examines the representation of the institution of family in Sade Adeniran ' s Imagine This, in order to explore the character ' s creation of a third space €“ one that is ambivalent and traumatic €“ in her context of divorce and family abandonment. As depicted in the narrative, a major reason behind such family tragedies is an overlap between patriarchy and the postcolonial state. Thus, through the protagonist ' s troubled identity and traumatic experience due to her family ' s dynamics, the narrative questions the role of a child in reconnecting fragmented family bonds. This heroine ' s traumatised hatred of her culture and of the institution of motherhood raises questions about the future of African feminism. If this ideology marginalises culture and renders motherhood as an institution no longer centrally important to contemporary African women, then it requires critical engagement. I explore how the literary genre inspired by African feminism enters established socio-cultural spaces critically and interrogates family dynamics ruthlessly. And I query whether it offers any solutions to the dilemmas of women that are uncovered and illuminated thereby. I will argue that the child protagonist in this narrative is presented not merely as a victim of circumstance €“ existing as she does betwixt and between family identities that are simultaneously familiar and strange €“ she is also depicted as attempting valiantly to reconnect the fragmented family bonds.
Keywords: African feminism, Sade Adeniran, betwixt and between, divorce, family
References
Adeniran, Sade. 2007. Imagine This. London: Star Wars Books.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1937. Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a Historical Poetics. In Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Ed. B. Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, pp. 15-24.
Bhabha, Homi. 2013. In Between Cultures. New Perspectives Quarterly 30(4): 107-109.
Boehmer, Elleke. 2005. Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bryce, Joyce. 2008. ' Half and Half Children ' : Third-Generation Women Writers and the New Nigerian Novel. Research in African Literatures 39(2): 49-67.
Cazenave, Odile. 2000. Rebellious Women: The New Generation of Female African Novels. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner.
Coulibaly, Aboubacar Sidiki. 2015. Theorizing and Categorizing African Feminism within the Context of African Female Novel. Recherches africaines 13: 1-23.
http://revues.ml/index.php/recherches/article/view/726. Accessed 30 December 2018.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. 1988. Nervous Conditions. Seattle: The Seal Press.
Davies, Carole Boyce. 1994. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New York: Routledge.
Eagleton, Terry. 2013. How to Read Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Emecheta, Buchi. 2008 [1979]. The Joys of Motherhood. London: Heinemann.
Forna, Aminatta. 2006. Ancestor Stones. London: Bloomsbury.
Gikandi, Simon. 2001. Theory, Literature, and Moral Considerations. Research in African Literatures 32(4): 1-18.
Hron, Madelaine. 2008. ' Ora Na-Azu Nwa ' : The Figure of the Child in ThirdGeneration Nigerian Novels. Research in African Literatures 39(2); 27-48.
Jegede, Olutoyin Bimpe. 2012. Proverbial Space and the Dialects of Place and Displacement in Sade Adeniran's Imagine This. African Research Review, 6(1): 275-286.
Mbembe, Achille. 1992. The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony. Public Culture 4: 1-30.
Nabutanyi, Edgar Fred. 2013. Representations of Troubled Childhoods in Selected Post-1990 African Fiction in English. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Nadaswaran, Shalini. 2013. Out of the Silence: Igbo Women Writers and Contemporary Nigeria. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of New South Wales, Australia.
Nadaswaran. 2011. Rethinking Family Relationships in Third-Generation Nigerian Women's Fiction. Relief 5(1): 19-32.
Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory. 2015. Politics of the Family in Contemporary East and West African Women ' s Writing. PhD dissertation. Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/97893/ngumbi_politics_2015.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y. Accessed 30 December 2018.
Ng'umbi, Yunusy Castory. 2017. Re-imagining Family and Gender Roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones. Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde 54(2): 86-99.
Nnaemeka, Obioma. 1998. Introduction: Reading the Rainbow. In Sisterhood: Feminisms and Power From Africa to the Diaspora: Ed. O. Nnaemeka. Trenton: Africa World Press, pp. 1-35.
Nyman, Jopi. 2009. Home, Identity, and Mobility in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Ogot, Grace. 1990 [1966]. The Promised Land. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.
Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. 1985. Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11(1): 63-80.
Okuyade, Ogaga. 2011. Weaving Memories of Childhood: The New Nigerian Novel and the Genre of the Bildungsroman. ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 41(3-4): 137-166.
Porter, Charles A. 1986. Forward. Men/Women of Letters. Special issue ed. Charles A. Porter. Yale French Studies 71: 1-14.
Shoneyin, Lola. 2010. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives. London: Serpent's Tail.
Smart, Carol. 2004. Changing Landscapes of Family Life: Rethinking Divorce. Social Policy and Society 3(4): 401-408.
Smart, Carol. 2006. Children's Narratives of Post-Divorce Family Life: From Individual Experience to an Ethical Disposition. The Sociological Review 54(1): 155-170.
Tucker, Irene. 1993. Writing Home: Evelina, the Epistolary Novel and the Paradox of Property. ELH: English Literary History 60(2): 419-439.
Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Vazquez, Jose Santiago Fernandez. 2002. Recharting the Geography of Genre: Ben Okri's The Famished Road as a Postcolonial Bildungsroman. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 37(2): 85-106.
Wilson, Mary-Claire. 2014. Imaginary World: An Interview with Sade Adeniran. [online]. Available from:
https://www.spikemagazine.com/imaginary-world-an-interview-withsade-adeniran.php [Acessed 20 July 2014].
