Gendered Narratives And The West African Civil War Novel: A Study Of Aminatta Forna’s The Memory Of Love And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun

Abstract

This study examines the West African civil war novel by investigating how female novelists present the West African civil war narrative. It examines how the female perspective on the civil war ushers in new dimensions that may be missing in earlier male authored novels. The argument of this thesis is that female novelists writing about West African civil war embark on a social agenda in their novels. Their perspective (narration) is one that goes beyond the blood curdling details of the battlefront, to explore the intimate and interpersonal relationships of characters within the war setting. The study, thus, emphasizes “how” a female perspective on war is conveyed through structural or technical innovations. It adopts formalist criticism to examine the techniques used in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love. The study seeks to show how female writers depict war by exploring; (i) how these writers narrate the war scenes with a focus on the intimate and interpersonal relationships (ii) the narrative technique they adopt and (iii) the meaning that emerges from the analysis of the form and structures. In brief, whereas Adichie narrates Biafra by looking at the interpersonal dependence of the characters, Forna recounts the traumatic effects of war on the people of Sierra Leone and advocates a psychological cleansing of the country.