Once Upon a Time in Biafra: War Time Caucus, Hate Crime and Ethnic Violence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

A study of wartime literature also serves the function of documenting and preserving the stories and key experiences which the victims have witnessed through their forbearance in such events. While hate crime, caste conflicts, communal violence and ethnic violence are indispensable discourses in the study of criminal justice system, a parallel study of hate crime and ethnic violence through the kaleidoscope of contemporary Nigerian literature would be equally influencing. For any civil war, citing one cataclysmic reason is never justifiable. In the late 1960s the political and social climate in a multi- ethnic country like Nigeria was brimming with religious and tribal differences, the immediate reason that triggered the unfortunate civil war in Nigeria was ‘hate speech’ of the political leaders and military commanders. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a third-generation Nigerian woman writer reminisces this civil war through her novel Half of A Yellow Sun (2006) in which the scarring memoirs of genocide, war time rapes, ransacking of houses and property, mass killings, forced conscription and forced prostitution of young girls are captured with the intent to highlight the menacing minds of war driven humans. It is true that Hate crime is more destructive and dangerous when it finds such secessionist atmosphere as would ignite ethnic violence and deeper still into a full-blown civil war. Through this paper an evaluation and analyses of the hate crime during the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War would come under scrutiny through the literary promontory of Nigerian novel Half of A Yellow Sun.