Afropolitanism, Marginal Identity and Culture Shock in Tendai Huchu’s the Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician

Abstract

Noting the dynamics of cultural interference on migrants, there is a conscious concern towards the sustainability of true African cultural values and identity by African migrants living in the diaspora, as their hybridized African cultural disposition, appears quite superficial. Evidently, with the presence of a stronger force, influence or interference, there is bound to be domination and monopolization of the smaller units or margins. Thereby, eradicating or totally altering a people’s cultural history, as their afropolitan manifestations, of maintaining their individual Africaness in these western societies or spaces slowly succumbs and fades off. Given the overwhelming nature of the higher force and having been treated or regarded as the marginal or invisible identity, by denying them their rights and privileges. Hence, it becomes natural, for their prodigies to align and identify with the stronger force, in furtherance, losing them to the western foreign cultures and tradition. Thus, Huchu’s novel, The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, seeks to address the danger involved in migrating and getting hybridized. So, within the purview of cultural coexistence, superiority and dominance, Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity theory, therefore helps to interrogate and highlight the unspoken pains and hurt of being in the third space of the hybridized.