Rethinking female sexuality in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

This article examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s exciting novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) not so much for the ways in which it reproduces the unsettling effects of the Biafran War but for how it draws attention to the diversity of sexual behaviours and identities in Africa as well as the grittiness of being human in a frightening war-ridden zone. This article argues for the ways in which Adichie emphasizes the humanity of her female characters through their claims to sexual freedom, even in the context of overwhelming civil unrest. By bringing sexuality into the heart of a Biafran War narrative, Adichie is read as a progressive feminist writer who advances a worldview that allows new ways of thinking about sex through the normalization of sexual behaviours that have been construed as unAfrican. In this way, Half of a Yellow Sun forms a counter-narrative to critical approaches that view female sexual agency as something inherently Western.