Between Globalization and Localization: Aesthetic Manifestation of Globality, Reflexivity and Social Change in Daya Pawar’s Baluta (2015)

Daya Pawar posthumously clearly establishes his human personality, laying bare to readers of his work, both his scars and warts, his pride and shame. Through his story Baluta, considered his autobiography and recently translated to English by Jerry Pinto, he gives us a chance to reclaim our own humanity. In a society where castes play a big role in determining both the present and the future of a person, social change is the only way to ensure equity and fairness to those regarded as the lower caste members, a group to which Daya Pawar himself belonged. The text Baluta  thus comes in handy to both bring out the woes of the dalits, and their importance on the flipside in the society, which the members of the upper caste blatantly refuse to acknowledge, but left alone, cannot perform these roles that are considered filthy. These Dalits are born into savagery, hence they are compelled to live within this cocoon, with minimum chances of ever changing this situation. Baluta, however, as stated by Pawar is just but a tip of the iceberg, hence there is still more to be deciphered concerning the plight of the lower caste members in India. This paper entails an analysis of Baluta, in terms of how globality, reflexivity and social change have been reflected, with these three concepts oscillating between globalization and localization

Cannibalising the African immigrant woman: Human trafficking as represented in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

In pursuit of greener pastures, African women seek jobs in the West through their trusted kin, including husbands, mothers and close friends, often getting lured into sex work on arrival in diaspora. Through the representation of this situation in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, this paper aims to demonstrate that while mainly it is the men and husbands who enroll and subject unwilling and desperate women, wives and partners into prostitution, conniving women also exploit the precarity and desperation of the newly arrived to recruit and entrap them into sex business that least benefits the entrapped women. The cannibalisation of women by women is underwritten by the status of the newly arrived illegal immigrants. As such, they cannot look for formal employment without risking arrest, detention and deportation. With their passports confiscated, their precarious state and unwillingness to go back home with nothing after heroic departures makes them easy prey for the unscrupulous queens of the underworld who control the economy of pleasure. Using both the feminist and postcolonialist approaches, this paper addresses the disruption of family units resulting from human trafficking

Navigating diaspora: An experience of female characters of African descent in selected novels by African female writers

The emigration of female characters of African descent in Adichie’s Americanah, Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Darko’s Beyond the Horizon from Africa to Europe and the United States of America is initially filled with hope for their perceived utopian world. Leaving what was their home for the better part of their lives, places they would easily identify with, to alien borders in which they would have to restart their lives excited them. This feeling results from a state of ‘double consciousness’, described by postcolonial theorists as a perception of the world divided between two antagonistic cultures. The female characters’ perception of the first world as ideal counters their perception of Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon as homes which have not provided a sense of fulfilment to their lives, thus prompting emigration from their respective indigenous homes to the first world. This paper entails an analytical discussion of the relationships among female characters of African descent and other characters as a way of negotiating their stay in diaspora. This paper is guided by concepts of Sisterhood as argued by Rosezellle and bell hooks; and concepts of postcolonial theory including unhomeliness and othering as articulated by Bhabha and Spivak

Struggle for Survival: Female Masculinisation as Presented in Macgoye’s Coming to Birth and Victoria and Murder in Majengo

In the patriarchal world, courage, vigor and strength are qualities often ascribed to men. In her two novels, Coming to Birth and Victoria and Murder in Majengo, Marjorie Oludhe MacGoye seeks to demystify this assumption by assigning these qualities to her female characters. This paper therefore aims at juxtaposing the female characters with the male characters in view of identity formation and fight for equity in society. Of major interest is how the female characters rise against the odds to live a life that rises against the societal misconceptions and limitations to a full life of value to the men and society at large. This is in the light of their contributions to fellow women and the society they live in. The tenets of deconstruction, a theory proposed by Jacque Derrida which seeks to unravel the various meanings of given texts, is used in the explication of the given texts

No longer green: Female characters of African descent as sex workers in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995)

This article explores the potentialities of diaspora as conveniently structured to demonstrate the emancipatory potential of migration for women in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995). Sex and sexual intercourse between men and women in the African societies that are fictionalised in these texts are not only an issue about morality, but also about how morality is governed and policed within these societies. While the societies in these texts hope to derive their integrity through women’s sexual purity, conflict arises when such communal integrity fails to recognise the individual circumstances of the female individuals upon whom such notions of purity rest. The question of what role sex and sexual practices play in upholding the honour of communities is a vexed one. While the societies that the texts explore here show less scrutiny on marital sex, regardless of whether it is consensual or forced, these societies occupy a judgmental pedestal on pre-marital and extra-marital sex. Harsher judgement, however, is reserved for individuals who engage in these practices for monetary gain. This textual analysis is informed by the postcolonial theory, as articulated by Homi Bhabha and his postulations on identity and ‘othering’

Beautiful dreams: Deconstructing discourses of redemption in Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995), Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009), Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016)

This paper entails an analysis of how in their different particularities, Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street; Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers explore the underbelly of notions informing the discourse of a redemptive West for Africans located at the margins of globalisation. The analysis locates Chimamanda’s Americanah and Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers within the racialised polity in the USA, in the midst of either a global economic meltdown or individual inability to access the fruits of globalisation because of the fact of race or immigration status.  It also explores how choicelessness in the job market in Europe informs the radical choice of persisting at the social and economic margins of Europe despite the harsh realities and outcomes in this choice. This paper demonstrates that the questions of place at particular moments in history force a revision of initial fantasy about the notions of the redemptive West.  This textual analysis is informed by the postcolonial theory, as articulated by Robert Nichols and Homi Bhabha and their postulations on identity, ‘othering’ and ‘in-between spaces’