RETHINKING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS IN THIRD‐GENERATION NIGERIAN WOMEN’S FICTION

Author(s)

  • Shalini Nadaswaran

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/relief.652

Keywords:

Nigeria, Womanism, family relationships, women, fiction

Abstract

Third‐generation Nigerian female writers’ representation of gender in local spaces through the rethinking of family relationships reflects a development and change from the first and second generation female writers Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, and Ifeoma Okoye. In a comparative analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2004), Unoma Azuah’s Sky‐High Flames (2005), Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This (2007) and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come (2005), a distinct pattern emerges of the young girl‐child / woman character developing into a matured, strong womanist. As female characters challenge their familial relationships, they develop their sense of personhood, reclaiming wholeness, authority and female subjectivity, changing prescribed roles and structures.

Author Biography

  • Shalini Nadaswaran
    Shalini Nadaswaran is currently a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is also under a fellowship scheme with the English Department, University Malaya, Malaysia. One of her main research interests is in the evolving representations of African women in local and global spaces.

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Published

2011-11-09

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2011): African women writers

Section

Articles - thematic dossier

License

All articles published in RELIEF appear in Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Under this licence, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their article, but they allow its unrestricted use, provided it is properly cited.

How to Cite

“RETHINKING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS IN THIRD‐GENERATION NIGERIAN WOMEN’S FICTION” (2011) RELIEF - REVUE ÉLECTRONIQUE DE LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE, 5(1), pp. 19–32. doi:10.18352/relief.652.