The mystery surrounding slaves among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria, especially as regards outcasts is quite weighty, much like the fate of the Dalits of India. The reluctance of many writers, until recently, to broach this topic betrays the sensitivity of the issue. Buchi Emecheta’s bravery in tackling this topic is marred, in The Bride Price, by the rather, unwarranted death of Akunna, the heroine. Criticisms against Emecheta though apt, do not consider her positive portrayal of slaves and outcasts in her two novels, The Bride Price and The Joys of Motherhood. The incisive juxtaposition of the brutality and mediocre of the freeborn against the benevolence, affluence and influence of the so-called slaves/outcasts is the concern of this paper. …show more content…
For the sad tale of Nnu Ego, the unfortunate child whose chi is that slave woman, buried alive, so to say, with her mistress, forms the core of The Joys of Motherhood. The focus of this paper is inherent in the analyses of the unique and subdued manner through which Emecheta sets out to achieve this social change, in both The Bride Price and The Joys of Motherhood. Though marred by Akunna’s death, the positive portrayal of the slaves in these two novels reveals Emecheta’s intention to condemn a major societal ill. Should the didactic essence of The Bride Price be disregarded due to the authorial error in the heroine’s demise? Does the imaging of slaves in these novels reveal something about the futility of a tradition that castigates some of its own by, merely, designating them as slaves? Can Akunna’s death be understood from a perspective different from the obvious and the author’s unfitting …show more content…
Our forefathers in their darkness called an innocent man Osu, a thing given to idols, and thereafter, he became an outcast, and his children, and his children’s children forever” (No Longer at Ease 56). G.T Basden seems to give an answer to Achebe’s rhetorical question above: “An Osu is a slave, but one distinct from an ordinary slave (ohu/oru) who in fact is the property of the god and when devoted to a god he has no prospect of regaining freedom and he restricts his movement to the protocols of the shrine to which he was attached” (Qtd in Onwubuariri
Ana-Mauríne Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt positions the female body as the scene where lives are interconnected across history and as a dissertation of the human condition. Her protagonists, Micaela and Miriam, tell a story of love, struggle, and survival that echoes the historical significance of slavery and the Caribbean middle passage across time and space. Divided into several sections based on time and location, one particular period in Lara’s novel connects Micaela and Miriam’s experiences most closely with slavery as a whole. After a voyage across the Mona Strait as an attempt to escape from the conditions in the Dominican Republic, they find themselves captured, trapped in a brothel, and forced into prostitution. Many parallels can be drawn to interpret Lara’s use of the brothel as a metaphor for the slave ships used to travel across the original Middle Passage, including the comparable use of people as commodities, the specific imagery and language Lara uses, the historical narrative presented at the beginning of each section, and the larger themes in which identities were simultaneously stripped by oppression and also preserved within the context of community and spirituality.
In, conclusion the experiences of Equiano’s servitude in Africa differed from his experience in England. The African slave trade primarily was based upon providing jobs to families or punishment to real criminals. Many times the cruel example of being kidnapped from your village and forced into this way of life was also prevalent. This narrative contains the terrifying events of a young a child being held captive. The sources we have of the truth from this period of time are limited and hard to obtain. Servitude still exists to today in many parts of Africa and will remain a common part of their
Document One The Journey to Slavery is about the life of Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was born in what is now Nigeria in 1745. At the age of 11 Equiano and his younger sister were taken from their home, drug though the woods, sold, and was then separated from one another. Equiano’s experience was considered very rare. Throughout his life as a slave he had three different owners. Equiano went from one master to the other till he ended up in a pleasant country in the hands of a leader with children and two wives. He describes how his owners treated him like he was part of the family. They spoke he same
Everyone contributes something to the common stock; and, as we are unacquainted with idleness, we have no beggars” (39). The concept of slavery was accepted as a part of the culture and even in the fields of Isseke, Africa slaves were put to work. “Sometimes indeed, we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery, and some other crimes, which we esteemed heinous.” (38) Equiano’s fortune landed him in the hands of a wealthy widow who purchased him from the traders who had kidnapped him. He lived the life as a companion to the widow and her son.
Abina was a courageous and bold young woman from West Africa who was enslaved against her will, even though the practice had been outlawed many years before. After escaping to British-controlled territory, she took her case to local court and placed her hope in the colonial British judicial system. Instead of being allowed to present her case to a jury of her peers, she was forced to look for sympathy from “important men,” or the white men with political power. The story exposes the fact that, for imperialists, labor was the scarcest resource. Because of this, the British employed forced labor, claiming that the Africans were working to pay off their taxes. While the brutal and sometimes violent extraction of labor is an ugly part of imperial efforts in Africa, the greatest tragedy is the political divisions that were imposed by Western powers, and the fact that they do not leave when British rule
"The Life of Olaudah Equiano” is a captivating story in which Equiano, the author, reflects on his life from becoming a slave to a freeman during the 19th century. Through his experiences and writing, Equiano paints a vivid picture of the atrocities and cruelties of European slavery. Ultimately through his narrative, Equiano intends to persuade his audience, the British government, to abolish the Atlantic slave trade as well as alert them of the harsh treatment of slaves. He successfully accomplishes his goal by subtly making arguments through the use of character, action, and setting.
In the story of “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, there are many literary themes that can be analyzed such as love, racism, gender inequality, and miscegenation. What this analysis will focus on is primarily on the central male character, Armand Aubigny, and on his views towards racism. More specifically, what this essay will aim to prove is that Armand Aubigny looked down upon the African race to the point where he hated them. One of the biggest driving points to aid this idea is how his family name shaped his behavior and actions according to the societal normalities of his time period. Another important aspect that will be considered is his very relationship towards his slaves in how he treated them cruelly even to the point where he is described as “having the spirit of Satan” (Chopin 3). In addition to this, the reader will also see Armand’s negative reaction to being aware of the implications of his son and wife having mixed blood in where he practically disowns them. With all this culminating to Armand finding out the ugly truth that the race he had treated so horribly is actually a part of his very own blood as well.
This article gave me a wider prospective on the whole theme of Sula. And since I have chosen to write about the women in Sula and their struggles to survive I found the article very useful in narrowing down my argument. And even though her thesis might have not matched her entire article, Nigro definitely understood Sula, the women, and the many themes of the novel.
Equiano argues and presses the reader and his audience to recognize that the African slave and the white slave owner are not as different as his audience may believe. In order to proclaim and showcase this idea of the value and worth of African slaves, Equiano uses the Christian religion to develop and sustain his argument. In many cases during Equiano’s time period, and for a while afterwards, Christianity and the Bible were used in defense of slavery, and this fact makes Equiano’s claim more powerful and groundbreaking. One of the key attributes of the novel is Equiano’s spiritual conversion and religious revelations. I believe that Equiano’s Christianity serves to connect him with his audience, increases his credibility as an author, and ultimately proclaims the disparity between the views of the slaves’ worth as merely economical, and the assumed Christian morality of the slave traders and his audience....
Hidoo, Rose. Culture in Chains: Abandonment in the Work of Selected West African Writers. Owerri, Nigeria: Black Academy, 1994.
Chinua Achebe analyzes a culture he is not accustomed with. The Madwoman in the attic theory comes into play as a westerner writing about “savage Africa”. Things Fall Apart provides an important understanding of Africana identity and history for those in the West who may be unfamiliar with African culture. Achebe tackles female identity within this book with delicacy keeping with the Ibo view of female nature in the background of the story but the forefront of the reader’s mind. A discussion of womanhood must touch upon manhood because they operate as a complementary, opposing, and equal entity.
In the western world, it is common for a little girl to imagine herself walking down the aisle in a beautiful white gown and her father at her side ready to hand her over into the hands of the man of her dreams. However, in Sub-Saharan African societies like Ghana and Uganda, girls dream of the day when a man, along with his family, will come to her father’s house and propose a bride price to perform the traditional marriage rights. Bride price according to Gita Sen is problematic in that it is defined as a payment made by a prospective husband to the family of a woman he wishes to marry (Sen). From Sen’s definition, it is evident that bride price not only highlights the dominance of patriarchy in African societies but emphasizes the objectification of women as payments are made in exchange of a bride/woman.
Things Fall Apart, a novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe is a story about an Igbo village in Nigeria and a man that once was a powerful influence in the tribe, but begins to lose his influence as Nigeria is colonized and Christian missionaries come to evangelize. A deeper look at the novel, with a feminist critics point of view, tells a lot about the Igbo people as well as the author’s thoughts about women in the novel. Feminist critics look at female authors, and female characters and their treatment as well as women’s issues in society. Since Achebe is a male, the main focus of feminist literary criticism for Things Fall Apart is the women in the novel and their issues as well as the Igbo view of gender identity. Many issues that women
As a female in Africa, the opposite of male, woman suffers sexual oppression; as an African, the opposite of white in an ever-colonized nation, the African woman also suffers racial oppression. Nnu Ego, Emecheta's protagonist, became at once for me the poster female of Africa, a representative of all subjugated African women, and her story alerted me to all the wrongs committed against African women, wrongs that could only be righted through feminist discourse. As with many surface readings I have performed as a student of literature, however, my perspective on The Joys of Motherhood began to evolve. First, I realized and accepted Nnu Ego's failure to react against oppressive forces in order to bring about change for herself and the daughters of Africa. I consoled myself, reasoning that the novel still deserves the feminist label because it calls attention to the plight of the African woman and because its author and protagonist are female.
In the book Second Class Citizen, Emecheta Buchi uses gender and sexuality to express the many ways in which society treated women and the obstacles that they had to overcome. Buchi uses this book and the many issues discussed throughout the book as a tool in the argument of gender and sexuality as a social construct; however, the ways of the world and the views of society do not see how the way women were treated back then as anything but normal. Adah, the main character of the book is a child who wants a Western education but is denied the opportunity to get one because the mere fact that she is a girl and the privilege of school goes to the boys of the family even though she is the one that wants the education. The theme that is openly used throughout the book is one of vehement animosity of gender discrimination that is often found in the culture of Adah’s people. Buchi portrays the way that African women are discriminated and victimized by the men and older women in their lives.