Inclusive Artistic and Literary Narratives in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
Abstract
This paper aims to break new ground in the interpretation of the character of Richard in Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. By analysing Richard’s literary narratives – in the forms of the ideas for his book, among others – and his artistic narrative of the roped pot, I will demonstrate that he challenges both colonial and cultural assumptions. By showing the intricate connection of different artistic forms in his multi-layered narratives, the inclusivity they reflect will be also examined and discussed.
Bibliografia
Achebe, Chinua. 2010a [1958]. Things Fall Apart. London: Penguin Books.
Achebe, Chinua. 2010b [1960]. No Longer at Ease. London: Penguin Classics.
Achebe, Chinua. 2010c [1964]. The Arrow of God. London: Penguin Modern Classics.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2008. African “Authenticity” and the Biafran Experience. Transition, 99: 42-53.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2014 [2013]. Americanah. New York: Vintage Books.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2017 [2006]. Half of a Yellow Sun. London: 4th Estate.
Barrett, A. Igoni. 2015. Blackass. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Boccaccio, Giovanni. 2014. Il Decamerone. Re-written by Aldo Busi. Milan: Rizzoli.
Boccaccio, Giovanni. 2003. The Decameron. Translated by G. H. McWilliam. London: Penguin Books.
Bullock, Kurt. 2000. Possessing Wor(l)ds: Brian Friel’s Translations and the Ordnance Survey. New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, 4, 2: 98-115.
Camboni, Maria Clotilde. 2017. Lisabetta and Lorenzo’s Tomb (on Decameron IV, 5). Italica, 94, 3: 431-447.
Coffey, Meredith. 2014. “She is Waiting”: Political Allegory and the Specter of Secession in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Research in African Literatures, 45, 2: 63-85.
Concilio, Carmen. 2021. On Becoming Tree, An Alter-native, Arbo-real Line of Flight in World Literatures in English. Carmen Concilio & Daniela Fargione eds. Trees in Literatures and the Arts: Humanarboreal Perspectives in the Anthropocene. Washington (DC): Lexington Books, 21: 37.
Conrad, Joseph. 2007 [1899]. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin Classics.
Cooper, Brenda. 2008. A New Generation of African Writers: Migration, Material Culture and Language. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer.
Deckard, Sharae. 2010. Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden. New York-London: Routledge.
Ejikeme, Anene. 2017. The Women of Things Fall Apart, Speaking from a Different Perspective: Chimamanda Adichie’s Headstrong Storytellers. Meridians, 15, 2: 307-329.
Fanon, Frantz. 2021 [1952]. Translated by Richard Philcox. Black Skin, White Masks. Dublin: Penguin Books.
Ganapathy, Maya. 2016. Sidestepping the Political “Graveyard of Creativity”: Polyphonic Narratives and Reenvisioning the Nation-State in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Research in African Literatures, 47, 3: 88-105.
Ghosh, Amitav. 2009 [2008]. Sea of Poppies. London: John Murray.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. 2005a. Interviewed by Nisha Jones. Abdulrazak Gurnah in Conversation. Wasafiri, 20, 46: 37-42.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. 2005b. Desertion. London: Bloomsbury.
Heaney, Seamus. 2001 [1975]. North. London: Faber and Faber.
Keats, John. 2006. Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil. John Barnard ed. The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, 239-255.
Lecznar, Matthew. 2016. (Re)Fashioning Biafra: Identity, Authorship, and the Politics of Dress in Half of a Yellow Sun and Other Narratives of the Nigeria-Biafra War. Research in African Literatures, 47, 4: 112-132.
Mabura, Lily G. N. 2008. Breaking Gods: An African Postcolonial Gothic Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. Research in African Literatures, 39, 1: 203-222.
Mason, Jessica. 2019. Intertextuality in Practice. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
McEwan, Ian. 2022. Lessons. London: Jonathan Cape.
Newns, Lucinda. 2022. “The Sea Cannot Be Fenced”: “Natural” and “Unnatural” Borders in Gloria Andalzúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera and Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 29, 4: 1097-1120.
Nnolim, Charles E. 2009. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Ernest N. Emenyonu ed. New Novels in African Literature Today. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 145-151.
Pucherová, Dobrota. 2022. Afropolitanism, Feminism and Empathic Imagination in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference. Albert Kasanda & Marek Hrubec eds. Africa in a Multilateral World: Afropolitan Dilemmas. London-New York: Routledge, 111-122.
Ruggiero, Guido. 2014. Getting a Head in the Renaissance: Mementos of Lost Love in Boccaccio and Beyond. Renaissance Quarterly, 67, 4: 1165-1190.
Strehle, Susan. 2011. Producing Exile: Diasporic Vision in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Modern Fiction Studies, 57, 4: 650-672.
Tunca, Daria. 2018. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as Chinua Achebe’s (Unruly) Literary Daughter: The Past, Present, and Future of “Adichebean” Criticism. Research in African Literatures, 49, 4: 107-126.
Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. 2023. Women Writers of the New African Diaspora: Transnational Negotiations and Female Agency. London-New York: Routledge.
VanZanten, Susan. 2015. “The Headstrong Historian”: Writing with Things Fall Apart. Research in African Literatures, 46, 2: 85-103.
Wenske, Ruth S. 2016. Adichie in Dialogue with Achebe: Balancing Dualities in Half of a Yellow Sun. Research in African Literatures, 47, 3: 70-87.
Webliografia
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2012. Commonwealth Lecture 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmsYJDP8g2U (consulted on 15/02/2023).
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2009. The Danger of a Single Story. TED, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg (consulted on 15/02/2023).
Heaney, Seamus. 1995. Nobel Lecture, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1995/heaney/lecture/ (consulted on 15/02/2023).