Chronotopicity And Cartographies Of Violence In Half Of A Yellow Sun
Narrative Strategies and Chronotope of Violence in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
By
Ayodabo J. Sunday
Department of English,
Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State, Nigeria
Introduction
As an event in a specific time and history, the exploration of the Nigerian civil war as a theme in fiction returns us to the focus on memory and its connection to narrative forms. The war happened in 1967-1970 when the South Eastern states, led by Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu decided to secede from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, following a period of social, cultural, political and economic tensions. These tensions culminated in a spate of coups and the Pogrom in Northern Nigeria in 1966, where allegedly, Igbo soldiers and civilians were targeted and killed. The secession led to the self-proclamation of the Republic of Biafra. The Nigerian military regime led by General Yakubu Gowon declared a blockade on Biafra and embarked on “police action,” leading to a full scale civil war that went on for four years. This war is the subject of Adichie’s second novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
It is important to explain the different shades of memory and their theoretical dimensions that we are dealing with here. Firstly, the memory of Biafra is influenced by the ethno-geographic politics that preceded and succeeded the independence of Nigeria, found in the notion of the tri-partitioning of Nigeria into ethno-religious polities during colonial occupation (Christopher Ernest Ouma, 13). The memory of Biafra can therefore be seen as primarily cultural, especially from the perspective of the Igbo as the dominant nation affected by the war. Secondly, the events preceding the Biafran war, including the coup and Pogrom of 1966, precipitated a series of massacres, and by 1970 when the war ended, an estimated 3 million lives had been lost (Christopher E.O, 14). In this way, the memory of Biafra
By
Ayodabo J. Sunday
Department of English,
Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State, Nigeria
Introduction
As an event in a specific time and history, the exploration of the Nigerian civil war as a theme in fiction returns us to the focus on memory and its connection to narrative forms. The war happened in 1967-1970 when the South Eastern states, led by Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu decided to secede from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, following a period of social, cultural, political and economic tensions. These tensions culminated in a spate of coups and the Pogrom in Northern Nigeria in 1966, where allegedly, Igbo soldiers and civilians were targeted and killed. The secession led to the self-proclamation of the Republic of Biafra. The Nigerian military regime led by General Yakubu Gowon declared a blockade on Biafra and embarked on “police action,” leading to a full scale civil war that went on for four years. This war is the subject of Adichie’s second novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
It is important to explain the different shades of memory and their theoretical dimensions that we are dealing with here. Firstly, the memory of Biafra is influenced by the ethno-geographic politics that preceded and succeeded the independence of Nigeria, found in the notion of the tri-partitioning of Nigeria into ethno-religious polities during colonial occupation (Christopher Ernest Ouma, 13). The memory of Biafra can therefore be seen as primarily cultural, especially from the perspective of the Igbo as the dominant nation affected by the war. Secondly, the events preceding the Biafran war, including the coup and Pogrom of 1966, precipitated a series of massacres, and by 1970 when the war ended, an estimated 3 million lives had been lost (Christopher E.O, 14). In this way, the memory of Biafra
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