Cultural Dissonance through Afro-Gothicism in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl

Abstract

The Nigerian British author, Helen Oyeyemi, has written an Afro-Gothic fiction novel titled The Icarus Girl. Afro-Gothic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction that is not without controversy. Still, this article reclaims the term as an appropriate lens for the story of a young girl, Jessamy, of Nigerian and British descent. Jessamy has to reconcile her dual heritage while she is troubled by a malevolent spirit child, known as an abiku in the Yoruba tradition. The abiku child is a vehicle to convey the trauma Jessamy experiences as she attempts to reconcile these Western and African worldviews. Similar cultural dissonance is a familiar source of trauma for young readers throughout the African diaspora today. Afro-Gothic novels counter the Eurocentric racism of Gothic fiction that views Africa as a dark continent, and in The Icarus Girl, Oyeyemi resolves the tension between Western and African philosophies. This resolution occurs when the protagonist, Jessamy, bravely confronts the abiku child in the spiritual plane, demonstrating the novel’s aspirational significance for young readers of the African diaspora.