Chika Unigwe Research Articles

Food, Migration, and Place Consciousness in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never than Late

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the multidimensional facets of food, migration, and individuals’ sense of otherness and dis/connection to place as represented in selected fictional works from Nigeria. The article pays attention in particular to Chika Unigwe’s short story collection, Better Never than Late (2019), which explores the experiences of a group of Nigerian migrants and Europeans living in Belgium through connected stories. Drawing on the theoretical insights of postcolonialism, negofeminism, and affect theory, we explore the connectedness of African migrant personae and their sensitiveness to food and place in the fictive universe of this short story collection. We disentangle the manner in which food and the occasions of meals creatively catalyze different forms of migrant and diasporic consciousness and embodied experiences, including gender consciousness, personhood, and sociocultural angst. The article traces the representation of food in different but connected narratives of estrangement within the African diaspora. The representation of food in fictional works allows for reflection on the psychosocial and existential realities of Africans in a fluid late modern world.

Undocumented Futures: Afrofeminist Conviviality in Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street

Abstract: This article thinks with Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street (2009) to conceptualise "Afrofeminist conviviality" as a form of resistance that enables repair on two levels. Afrofeminist conviviality offers the possibility of preventing the trafficked sex worker's social death. It also gestures, however provisionally, towards the possibility of flourishing for the subaltern subject outside the liberal, moralist binaries of free will and coercion. On Black Sisters' Street interweaves stories by four undocumented West African women trafficked from Lagos, Nigeria to Antwerp, Belgium. Afrofeminist conviviality can capture something of both the historical weight of resistance and the open-ended trajectory for the undocumented African sex worker towards less violent futures. It thus communicates a sense of becoming that is caring, affirmative, and recuperative, while also being incomplete, irregular, and irreverent. On Black Sisters' Street allows for accounting the reparative possibilities for trafficked sex workers against the sheer cruelty of the global sex market. At the same time, On Black Sisters' Street remains resolute in its hope for the thriving of the trafficked women in their undocumented futures, however unauthorised, informal, and outlawed those may be.

Minority, collectivity, and the short story cycle. Identity and difference in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late

This essay expands the politics of minor literature that, in the influential work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, rests on the identification between the individual and the collective, by drawing on the affordances of the genre of the short story cycle. While highlighting the relational dynamics between the minor and the major that underlies Deleuze and Guattari's account, I show how a focus on genre offers the critical tools to articulate the enclosure of community with the pluralities of subjective belonging. The short story (cycle) has often been considered to have close affinities with minor literature due to its fairly low reputation, its interest in marginal characters, and its typical narratives of community. The essay complicates this equation through a discussion of Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late (2019), a series of interconnected stories illuminating the shared struggles of a group of Nigerian migrants in Belgium. While the cycle as a whole conveys a sense of belonging in which linguistic difference provides the very ground of group formation, the individual stories reveal the gaps within the collective and illustrate the ways in which identity and migration are affected by divergent intersectional subject positions marked by class and gender. By examining how political and aesthetic concerns go hand in hand in Unigwe’s short story cycle, the essay argues that minorities’ political struggles for emancipation do not necessarily require internal cohesion, but can also be enhanced through social diversification and multiple literary practices that shift with new contexts of linguistic production and global circulation.

Migration and the Dystopian Imagination of European Border Regimes

Inward migration has long troubled the European political imagination. For example, an emphasis on fortification and low immigration was key to the civilisational fantasy of many early modern European literary Utopias. The dominant contemporary political framing of irregularised migration as a European problem thus leans on an imagined transnational ‘European civilisation’, concretised in the contemporary EU but with roots stretching back centuries. This article examines critical cultural treatments of legal and policy frameworks, grounded in a (supra-)nationalist civilisational myth, which now determine the treatment of irregularised migrants. Specifically, I examine three cultural texts (a novel, a film, and documentary artwork) produced in the years immediately preceding the development of the current Dublin III Regulation, which determines how and where asylum claims are processed in the EU. These three realist primary texts counter the official techno-scientific discourse of territorial integrity using science fictional narrative strategies, generic conventions, and tropes: the 2012 documentary artwork Liquid Traces: The Left to Die Boat Case by Forensic Architecture uses science fictional visualisations to directly confront the deadly effects of European bordering in the Mediterranean. Aki Kaurismäki’s film Le Havre (2011), shows how twentieth-century history haunts contemporary migration fears by spatialising multiple temporalities in the titular city. Finally, Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street (2009), explores the colonial dynamics of irregularised migration and the complexities of individual agency, producing a form of critical dystopian engagement with the social and political conditions of the present without being a generic dystopia. These three texts expose the dangers and violence of European bordering, and counter the science fictional civilisational fantasies of its policies. They share an emphasis on the need for solidarity, resistance, and, via encounters with the spectral presences of Europe’s past, they demand forms of historical justice which will break with contemporary dystopian conditions and the hard borders of the present.

From Bildungsroman to Bildungsromance: Physical and Affective War in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees

The bildungsroman has dominated the Nigerian literary landscape since the 1990s with novels such as Chimamanda N. Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2004), Unoma Azuah’s Sky-High Flames (2005), Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer (2012), and Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015). These coming-of-age stories place a special emphasis on the national evolution of Nigeria. Thus, by delving into such interrelation of the national and personal domains, I propose to theorize Under the Udala Trees as a “bildungsromance,” or novel of affective and romantic development. I use the term “bildungsromance” to describe the growth of Okparanta’s protagonist, Ijeoma, as intrinsically associated with the experiences gathered from her affective attachments both in the public and the private spheres. I will analyze Ijeoma’s sentimental relationships as she discovers and naturalizes her queer identity. For this, I will delve into the negative affects − in the form of fear, shame and guilt (Braidotti 2009, 50) − that influence Ijeoma’s experience as a result of her non-conforming to the dictums of Nigerian customary laws. Ironically, such negative affects will be introduced as tightly associated with “the promise of happiness” (Ahmed 2010, 14). In turn, I shall underline the role of Ijeoma’s intimate and romantic relationships in prompting positive forms of affect such as self-love and pride. These affective experiences allow Ijeoma to acquire a critical perspective towards Nigerian customary laws and their impact on identity formation and on what has been referred to as the “democratisation of the private sphere” (Giddens 1992, 184). Ultimately, I will hinge upon Ijeoma’s awareness of her own affective advancements as a key element in her bildungsromance.

Stepping out of the boundaries of atavism and women’s self-reconstruction in Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer

Stepping out of the boundaries of atavism and women’s self-reconstruction in Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer

MIGRATION, IDENTITY AND RECONSTRUCTION OF FEMALE MIGRANTS’ EXPERIENCES IN CHIKA UNIGWE’S BETTER NEVER THAN LATE

This paper interrogates migration, identity and the nuances of female migrants’ experiences in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never than Late. The paper notes that, although women seem to have dominated the global migration flow, migration has mostly been considered from an overwhelmingly male perspective, perhaps, due to the male predominance in the process. This development, most often, creates complexes that diminish the identity and self-worth of women in their destination countries. It also leads to some misrepresentations and erroneous portrayal of migrant women in some literary and critical discourses on migration. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts a deconstruction and reconstruction of this perception and establishes that women, like men, are also active participants in the migration process and not merely appendages of male migrants. The paper adopts Post-colonial Feminist theory as its theoretical position and, through analysis of some extrapolations in some selected stories in Unigwe’s text mentioned above, the paper reveals that, given their multifaceted roles, women contribute immensely to the economic development of their countries of destination, through their competencies and skills. The paper concludes on an appeal note, that countries should evolve legal instruments that promote the rights of migrant women.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0015/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Crime Waves and Human Rights Violations in Lagos Cityscape in Selected Nigerian Short Stories

this study investigates the normality of crimes and human rights violations in the selected short stories of Jude Dibia, Chika Unigwe and Nnedi Okorafor as representatives of 21st century Nigerian short stories that thematise criminality and desecration of human rights. Specifically, the paper explores various crimes such as armed robbery, hooliganism, bribery, extortion, murder, security agents’ connivance with criminal elements and the resultant human rights violations. Deploying postcolonial urban theory as its launching pad to interrogate the postcolonial realities within Lagos spatiality and crime wave, the paper shows that the police play major role in the escalation of crimes and perpetuation of human rights abuses through collusion with armed robbers and engaging in bribery and corruption, conspiracy theory, brutality, concealment of crimes and criminals and extrajudicial killings. Considering its cosmopolitan nature, Lagos is metaphorised as the microcosm of the nation; thus, realities within Lagos cityscape expose happenings in the nation at large. The socio-economic anomic situations depicted in the stories justify their post-independence disillusionment and jeremiad.

The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe

Reviewed by: The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe Delight Ejiaka CHIKA UNIGWE The Middle Daughter Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dzanc Books. 2023. 312 Pages. THE MIDDLE DAUGHTER is set in contemporary Enugu in the heart of eastern Nigeria. It revolves around a family who suffered tragic loss and the ways their trauma-coping mechanisms complicate life, while commenting on Nigeria's upper-middle-class echelon and the dichotomy of moving up or down the social ladder through marriage. It explores the vulnerability of grief and fragility of relationships. It takes a cursory look at the family unit and considers how pressure can pull apart a once steady family structure, while shedding light on the healthcare system, women's reproductive rights, "surrogacy," and baby factories in Nigeria. The first line of the novel, "I fear the man who is my husband," is bench-pressing so many thematic weights. It layers a sense of foreboding by piquing the reader's curiosity and foreshadowing events connected to abuse. The story opens with news of Udodi's death, the first daughter, who pursued higher education in the United States and crashed in an accident a week before her return to Enugu. After her death, the family is thrown into irreconcilable grief that feels impossible to escape. Unigwe writes, "Udodi's death was the beginning of the raging storm but at that moment, we thought that the worst had already happened, and that life would treat us with more kindness." Nani, the protagonist and middle child, is othered in so many subtle ways. The names of the first and last daughters start with a U: Udodi and Ugo. Both names signify peace and abundance, respectively. However, the middle child's name starts with an N: Nani. Aside from being othered by the lettering of her name, Nani means "scarcity," a direct contrast to the abundance and goodwill of her sisters' names. The otherness that was prophesied in her name manifests consistently and drives her into exile for several years. Nani is engrossed in her grief and numb to the advancement of the people in her life who are "successfully" navigating their pain. Her desire for visibility through subtle acts of rebellion leaves her vulnerable and creates the domino that upends her life. She experiences debilitating levels of scarcity, deprivation, and violence till she shatters like a clay pot left to burn in the kiln for too long. The book features multiple POVs from other major characters. It is punctuated by The chorus, a series of poems, narrated by Udodi, who lyricizes the cultural and mythological context of the characters' lives through an omniscient lens. The writing in the book is compelling and grounds the reader in its scenes. The novel is fast-paced and plot-driven with great character development that propels the reader through the pages. There are so many life-altering events that the reader will be left gasping for air. Unigwe raises the stakes of the story with every chapter until it crescendos and leaves the audience devastated. Delight Ejiaka University of Nevada, Las Vegas Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Gender and the Affective Dimensions of Sex Trafficking in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

This article analyses Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street as a socio-political narrative by examining the issue of sex trafficking and the subsequent violation of women’s fundamental human rights. First, I will argue that gender is the primary cause of inequality to which African women are exposed, within and outside the continent. The novel’s characters are indeed both victims and accomplices of the corrupt patriarchal capitalist system; they are subject to social constraints but also active agents capable of resisting the restrictions imposed on them. Second, I will draw on Sara Ahmed’s thesis about the circulation of emotions to discuss how pain, disgust, anger, and hatred ‘work’ in modern global society and determine the affective dimensions of sex trafficking. I will demonstrate, therefore, how these emotions highlight the power dynamics of patriarchy and capitalism and simultaneously give voice to women’s political and ethical demands for reparation and redress.

Migration, Diasporic Realities and the Quest for Home in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom

This paper preoccupies itself with a close analysis of the concept of migration, diasporic realities and the quest for home in Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom. Migration is a recurrent issue in the world today. Due to one reason or the other, people leave from one geographical location for the other—usually to Europe and America for greener pastures. The study investigates the socio-economic experiences of these African characters in the diaspora and the despair encountered resulting from dreams deferred. In this regard, this paper examines the disillusionment and frustration that characterize Unigwe and Gyasi’s fictional characters in the selected works as they grapple with their expectations and the actual realities in the New World. The work operates on the premise that characters in the texts are induced and motivated by dreams of a better life to immigrate to Europe and America where they end up being trapped in hardship, culture shock and identity crisis. Guided by the Postcolonial theory, this study revealed that, one’s perception of place in which he/she finds himself or herself is determined by the socio-cultural background of place/local; and that success is linked to mentality and personality. The study also found out that characters end up in disillusionment when their expectations are not realized, and this puts them in a melancholic state, hence, their decision to return home.

In Search of a Future

Abstract The contemporary Nigerian novel is much about the accentuation of the theme of despair, drawing on issues of unemployment, harsh economic realities, political crises, insurgency and corruption. It also explores this despondence and the search for a better life. The choice of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You by Chance illustrates this point. The paper explores the despair that the youths encounter in the face of changing times and the struggle to scale through the despair. The critical textual analysis undertaken in this article reveals that lack of gainful employment has caused the youths in On Black Sister’s Street to flee the country in search of greener pastures where they are forced to work as prostitutes. The protagonists of the two novels are caught in one web of despair, but have the hope of leading a better life. The novels illuminate how despite the characters’ predicament, they are ready as well as willing to press on in order to change their precarious situations. This tenacity of hope serves as the novelistic vision of the authors.

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’.

Traits of Womanist in Unigwe’s Night Dancer: Complementarity versus Culture

Presentations of couples as supportive are a foregrounding motif in Chika Unigwe's Night Dancer. This traditional notion is still very topical especially in ensuring that the union lasts as long as they are alive. However, the female still believe that the paramount duty of the male is family provision while the female is a care provider. Nevertheless, there is a paradigm shift, such that, resources are harnessed together to sustain the family due to economic pressure. This paper examines some negative strains of culture in marriages and how the role complementarity plays in marriage, especially in a culture where tradition emphasizes male dominance. The outcome is the ensuing interrogation of the universalizing qualities of the womanist ideology with its tenet of complementarity. This equally questions the concept of equality at the long run. Therefore, when the partners contribute financially, will the issue of dominance and superiority in marriage not be questioned? This paper concludes with the notion that despite the politics of difference that endeavours to weaken women's liberation, womanist theory is still a panacea to understanding the mindset of the women via their experiences. This will equally distinct reality from stereotypes.

Sex work and the city: Liminal lives in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

Chika Unigwe’s 2007 novel On Black Sisters’ Street centres on the lives of four women illegally trafficked from Nigeria to the sex district of Antwerp. Documenting how these characters negotiate the dark spaces of the city, Unigwe highlights the structural inequalities and legislative failures that keep these women in a state of exception. The novel offers a portrait of the contemporary city and the precarious position of those locked out of legal protection of the state. This article focuses on the urban spaces of Sisi, Efe, Joyce and Ama, and how they become commodities of underground migration system. Visible in the windows of the red-light district each night, they are considered persona non-grata by the legal infrastructure that fails to protect them.

A Realist Interpretation of Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street

This paper is a realist interpretation of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street. The text is considered for study here because it dwells on the popular, the modern and social issues that define realist works. The paper involves realism of subject-matter and social realism as its theoretical tools for the evaluation of the research subject. Realism of subject-matter deals with themes that are common to society while social realism looks at the poor social conditions of the middle and lower classes. The paper is a qualitative research and it is based on a content analysis of the select text for study. The paper probes the ugly life of four young girls in Nigeria who are trafficked into Antwerp, Belgium, to work as prostitutes and earn income for their traffickers. The girls suffer from sexual abuse and deceit from their parents and older men. They undergo hardship as a result of lack of proper parental care, unemployment, insecurity and poor social services which make them frustrated. All of these make their lives vulnerable. Therefore, the study concludes that, well placed individuals, parents, civil society organizations and the government should make efforts to improve and secure the lives of vulnerable young women in Nigeria in order to help them escape from their vulnerabilities. Also, the novel’s authentic representation of life and society and its focus on character more than plot, including its attention to the lower class, the social and the contemporary issues fits it into the realist agenda.

Righting Migrants’ Stories in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late: A Review

Chika Unigwe is renowned for her writings that centre on migrant issues, sex trafficking, trauma, and rape. She employs the novel and mostly the short story genre to emphasise these subjects as they affect women, hence lending her voice to the third-generation women writers. Unigwe in this new collection of short stories tries to represent the migrant stories by exploring different aspects of immigration. She also emphasises two main subjects that are often difficult to express in literary works by women—rape and trauma. With the rather paradoxical title, Better Never Than Late, 10 different short stories, some of which are interlinked to a migrant couple, Agu and Prosperous, and their friends who visit them every weekend, portray the mirage of the dream of finding greener pastures overseas.

LINGUISTIC NUANCES AND CREATIVE TECHNIQUES IN CHIKA UNIGWE'S SELECT NOVELS

This paper examines the practical application of linguistic and creative tools in Chika Unigwe’ s On Black Sisters’ Street and Night Dancer. This study relies significantly on the notion of stylistics, with its creative and linguistic naunces, to enhance a more holistic understanding and appreciation of the select texts. Based on linguistic evidence, the novels reveal the physical and psychic effects of the postcolonial realities on the post-colonial subjects. The descriptive system of the texual analysis shows that the artistic values of the novels are illuminated primarily through the language and creative techniques employed by the author in the select novels. Unigwe’s creative manipulation of languages in the select texts shows that most Nigerian writers in particular have eventually arrived at a linguistic compromise between the target and the indigenous languages as well as pidgin. This does not just reflect the dexterousness of the author as a story teller with exciting linguistic, stylistic, and structural awareness but indeed, the nature of Nigeria as a dense linguistic ecology. The author’s skillful manipulation of the English language in such a way that it still encapsulates the indigenous knowledge and culture, as well as the striking creative techniques employed makes her message vigorous and captivating to the readers since they invoke clear mental pictures, code variation, linguistic appositioning/substitution, transliteration, narrative framing and other stylistic peculiarities, all for linguistic foregrounding, artistic beauty and signification. It is the opinion of this paper that more African writers, especially young and developing writers should creatively use the languages both foreign and indigenous at their disposal not just to suit the African milieu or experience but to promote the indigenous languages, and also widen and deepen the aesthetic taste of their artistic productions.

Writing an(Other) Europe: Challenging peripheries in Chika Unigwe’s fiction on Belgium

ABSTRACT Nigerian-born author Chika Unigwe situates a substantial part of her oeuvre in contemporary, multicultural Belgium, a location rarely explored in postcolonial literatures despite its colonial history and sizable migrant communities. This article demonstrates how, in her short fiction and her novels The Phoenix (2007) and On Black Sisters’ Street (2009), Unigwe’s literary portraits of the country, based on the perceptions and experiences of Nigerian migrants living there, challenge traditional centre/periphery dichotomies. Her characters, who are mainly young Nigerian women, move across boundaries between Africa and Europe, the big city and the provincial town, the city centre and the suburbs, the touristic historic centre and the red-light district, their mobilities characteristic of contemporary globalized societies. The fictions are analysed to highlight the equivocality of centres and peripheries and the permeability of the borders that separate them, as well as the resilient mobility of Nigerian migrants in Belgium.

Transnational sex trade: prostitution, identity crisis, and memories in On Black Sisters Street, by Chika Unigwe

Transnational sex trade: prostitution, identity crisis, and memories in On Black Sisters Street, by Chika Unigwe