2025/01/01 by Youssouf DIALLO & Saliou DIONE
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #African studies and sociopolitical issues #FOS: Languages and literature #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
paper · doi:10.48734/akofena.n018.vol.4.12.2025
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/12/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Abstract: This article explores how NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory (2022) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) reimagine national and transnational narratives by interrogating the paradoxes and disillusionments of African independence. Both novels confront the symbolic and material costs of freedom, challenging the celebratory discourse surrounding national liberation. While Bulawayo deploys allegory and satire to critique post-independence dictatorship and political stagnation in Zimbabwe, drawing parallels with broader African experiences of failed promises and authoritarian rule, Adichie revisits the Biafran War in Nigeria to expose the brutal realities of secessionist ambition and the enduring scars of colonial fragmentation. Through these works, both Bulawayo and Adichie dismantle dominant state-sponsored myths, foregrounding the lived experiences of individuals caught in cycles of violence, betrayal, and ideological manipulation. Using decoloniality as a theory, this article re-centers African societies ‘everyday realities, reimagining how both Bulawayo and Adichie undo the effects of colonialism, as an episodic moment in Africa’s long history. The article argues that both novels operate as counter-narratives literary interventions that question official histories while envisioning more inclusive, accountable, and democratic futures as they engage the reader, at both the national and transnational scales, in projects of achieving emancipatory futuristic goals. In doing so, they highlight the enduring cost of independence and the urgent need for postcolonial reimagining of Africa’s past, present, and future. Keywords: Africa, independence, postcolonial, decoloniality, narratives.