KENTE - Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts

REPRESENTATION OF TRAUMA IN TSITSI DANGAREMBGA’S THIS MOURNABLE BODY

2025-08-03T22:31:49+00:00

This article examines the representation of African women in their gender relations in postcolonial Zimbabwe, focusing on their experiences, struggles, and challenges. It examines the oppressive and traumatic experiences of female characters in the Zimbabwean setting of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body (2018). I choose Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body because it is a narrative text that somewhat captures the reality of trauma at the psychological and physical levels in women's lives during the colonial and postcolonial eras. This article, therefore, is rooted in how traumatic encounters have permeated the narrative texture of the novel. It is this traumatic encounter in gender relations that constitutes women’s experiences in Zimbabwe. The argument is that trauma constitutes Dangarembga’s particular mode of self-apprehension and the representation of women's lived realities in the novel. In evidence of this, the lives of female characters in This Mournable Body are often depicted as profoundly affected by trauma, which, however, leads them to make choices that enable them to thrive and lead meaningful lives both personally and socially. As such, this article examines how the primary text operates in accordance with the poetics of trauma theory, particularly drawing on Cathy Caruth’s framework. A key intention of the paper is to explain the traumatic contextualisation of the novel and to portray how the victims in gender relations constantly manage to negotiate their survival and existence through agency.

AN EXPLORATION OF CULTURE SHIFT IN THE PORTRAYAL OF LADIES IN YORUBA NOLLYWOOD FILMS

2024-11-10T22:53:51+00:00

The paper examines Yoruba Nollywood’s construction of moral decadence among Yoruba ladies in Nigeria as represented in Yoruba film-texts. Such decadence is borne out of the concept of culture shift through globalization. This is because these two concepts mean Western hyper-civilization to most modern Yoruba women. This reads post-feminist consciousness in some of the productions of Yoruba film industry. The study is qualitative in nature. Film-texts were selected based on gender and grossing consideration. It is motivated by the principle of Molara Ogundipe-Leslie’s Stiwanist Theory which advocates the inclusion of women in the social scheme of things. The study emphasizes Yoruba Nollywood for depth. In the selected film-texts, Agbere Olosa Meta, Alakada Part 1, and Iyawo Digboluja, women, in the bid to exercise their freedom, exhibit such ills as bickering, deceit, avarice, prostitution, fake life, women rising against women, and commercialization of the marital process. All these moral excesses suggest that modern Yoruba ladies need to undertake intra-gender introspection in order to attain the goal of feminist agitation currently undertaken by concerned gender freedom advocates in the Southwestern part of the country. This is necessary so as to discourage men from continuing to find faults in women’s quest to be heard in society. It is noted in the study that the ladies featured in these films exhibit non-traditional traits such as smart life and independence in their dealings with men. These are non-conformist conceptions which have been more pronounced among many Yoruba ladies in the age of globalization, but which the films lampoon. Such condemnation is targeted towards the revamping of traditional Yoruba ethical values and peaceful gender coexistence, especially in the Yoruba society as a Nigerian (African) society.

AN EVALUATION OF SELECTED AFRICAN CULTURAL VALUES IN EFO KↃDJO MAWUGBE’S IN THE CHEST OF A WOMAN AND MARIAMA BÂ’S SO LONG A LETTER

2025-05-07T14:25:07+00:00

Literature serves as a vital platform for expressing the concerns and values of society. As such, culture plays a central role in literary works, since authors are often influenced, both directly and indirectly, by the societal contexts in which they are nurtured. At the same time, literature can shape culture by critiquing social practices or suggesting new directions for societal development. This paper examines selected cultural issues presented in Efo Kɔdjo Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman (2008) and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (2004), using frame analysis as a theoretical lens. The central argument is that, because culture is inherently dynamic, outdated or harmful cultural norms must be critically reassessed to promote a more equitable and functional society. The study concludes that literature should not be viewed merely as entertainment or academic material, but as a powerful tool for social transformation.

EXPLORING NARRATIVE DISTANCE IN CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

2025-07-07T10:19:12+00:00

Despite the growing attention given to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s works, especially Half of a Yellow Sun, criticisms about the structure and narrative techniques she adopts in this text are still marginal to the amount of critical review and assessment she has received over the years. For a number of reasons, the bulk of criticism on her works has focused on thematic and ideological issues to the neglect of other equally significant concerns like narrative technique. This study, therefore, explores her adroit use of narrative mood in her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun to highlight and intensify the diegesis of this narrative. By employing one of Genette’s (1980) narrative categories, mood (perspective and distance) as the analytical framework, the study explores the narrative’s particular use of distance and how this distance aids in realising a cohesive and coherent narrative. By examining the characteristics and other particulars of narrative distance, the authors clarify the mechanisms used in the narrative act and identify the methodological choices the author makes in order to present her story. The study contributes to theory by demonstrating the extent to which Genette’s theory of narratology is useful to the analysis of the African novel. The study is also significant in that it has pedagogical implications, as it will, among other things, serve as a material to facilitate the teaching of narrative analysis, especially narrative technique.

“WELCOME HOME”: THE UNHOMELY IN YAA GYASI’S HOMEGOING

2025-09-13T14:46:58+00:00

This paper critically examines the contested and ambiguous notion of the home in postcolonial and diasporic contexts, utilizing Yaa Gyasi’s transformative neo-slave narrative, Homegoing (2016), as a focal point. By intricately tracing the story of seven familial generations over three centuries across Ghana and America, Gyasi portrays Atlantic deracination, diaspora, and transnationalism as both individual and collective experiences. In this way, as the novel’s title suggests, the home, as both a physical and psychological space, is desired but also elusive. The perpetuation of homegoing, thus, connects characters despite physical, temporal, and generational separation—meaning that the emergence of the home and the return to the home are interconnected. This paper draws on Homi Bhabha’s concept of the unhomely—a condition in which the boundaries between the private and the public blur, creating a postcolonial space that is both familiar and estranged. In this regard, Bhabha provides a framework for how characters within Homegoing engage with things left unsaid, unresolved histories, and unspoken truths that suddenly re-emerge within the political and social existence. This paper analyzes the establishment of an anchored yet ambiguous “non-place”—characterized by de-rootedness—which produces cyclical hauntings and a fractured sense of the home for subsequent generations. Ultimately, this paper concludes that despite the sense of unhomeliness, the contemporary generation finds a sense of reconciliation with the home by returning to and tentatively reconnecting with their origins.

REPRESENTATION OF INDIGENEITY IN THE POSTCOLONIAL DETECTIVE NOVEL: A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF NII AYIKWEI PARKES' TAIL OF THE BLUE BIRD

2025-07-25T12:37:52+00:00

Nii Ayikwei Parkes’ Tail of the Blue Bird has gained critical attention as a significant literary achievement and an exemplum of the postcolonial detective novel. Nonetheless, how the novel constructs locational identity as a way of contesting western ideals, epistemologies of knowing, and globalization of the English language is less discussed. Using the postcolonial concept of indigeneity, the paper explores elements of indigeneity in Tail of the Blue Bird and how these assert the Ghanaian cultural identity. The paper demonstrates that language, naming and traditional storytelling are three cogent ways indigeneity manifest in the novel. Despite the onslaught of globalization, Parkes uses these aforementioned elements as an art form that offers incremental advance in preserving Ghanaian history and records, resisting the othering of Ghanaian languages and culture, and unapologetically projecting the unique belief systems and values of the Akan culture. Overall, the paper contributes to ongoing scholarship on the reclamation of African identities in postcolonial literature and highlights Tail of the Blue Bird as a vital text for understanding identity formation and cultural resistance in African narratives.

Keywords: Ghanaian, Indigeneity, naming, Tail of the Blue Bird, traditional storytelling