Introduction

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

It was in his work Prison Notebooks that Antonio Gramsci proposes, “ All men

are intellectuals”. The term ‘Vernacular Intellectuals’ however entered the lexicon with

Grant Farred’s What’s My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals in 2003. Farred’s term

derives from a critique of Gramsci’s sweeping democratic statement where Gramsci

distinguishes between traditional and organic intellectuals. The vernacular intellectual

represents a reconsideration of the category intellectual. It is premised on the critical

expansion of the category in that it proposes that the work of thinking assumes many

guises and cannot be restricted to the formally educated classes. According to this

reconsideration, the vernacular intellectual is an individual whose intervention into how a

society thinks about itself—its politics, race, justice—are significant in part because of

the person’s identity and position. The vernacular intellectual represents a form of critical

social engagement that demonstrates the intellectuality, or thought processes, of subaltern

life.

Going by the view of Edward Said; an intellectual is the one who ‘speaks truth to

power’. An intellectual has to reconcile the identity and the actualities of his own culture,

society, and history to the reality of other identities, cultures, peoples.Farred describes

‘Vernacular Intellectuals’ as being unsophisticated, rustic, academically ill-equipped

intellectual enthusiast and rebel.Gramsci reinvents ‘thinking’ as not limited to the

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formally educated class trained by the conventional intellectual means like a university or

a political party. The interventions of a vernacular intellectual’s thinking evolves out of

his identity and position. So the term represents a critical social engagement that

demonstrates the thought process of subaltern life. As the vernacular intellectual emerges

from the subaltern class, he speaks the language of that class.

The Vernacular Intellectual challenges the traditional notion of intellectuals which

restricts the definition to those trained by conventional intellectual means; and accredited

by the university system, bourgeoisie society or political parties. This means that the

vernacular intellectual is not easily identified or accepted into wider society. It is basically

because these people emerge from the subaltern classes of the society, speak their

language, articulating a politics that is often incommensurable with that of dominant

society. The issue of language is thus critical to the construction of a vernacular

intellectual.

The vernacular intellectual, addresses and confronts social injustice and may not

be organised through or connected to organised political structures. In a study of

vernacular intellectuals, Farred developed a category of the involved thinker as a

vernacular intellectual. Farred conceives of vernacular intellectuals as individuals who

address and confront social injustice from both inside and outside traditional, academic or

political spheres. According to him, the vernacular intellectual is in no way connected to

organised political structures unlike traditional or organic intellectuals. These figures

emerge out of the vernacular experience, they craft a public space, and they address issues

of the day that directly affect the communities in which they operate. The vernacular,

Farred argues in What's My Name?, is a distinct definition and a way of being the

intellectual. Farred conceptualizes a vernacular intellectual by rethinking Gramsci’s idea

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of the function of an intellectual. Farred’s vernacular intellectual is a critique of the

traditional intellectual.

Farred explains the concept of vernacular intellectuals by taking into consideration

the lives of four men; Stuart Hall, CLR James, Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley. Farred

positions Alias the quintessential vernacular intellectual observing,

“Ali’s use of language as a cultural resource is in and of itself unique;

no other boxer used it to indict his opponents morally and ideologically”.

(What’s in a Name?)

Bob Marley’s messages of liberation are as central to his popularity as his lyrical

and melodic sophistication. Neither man is described as an intellectual, yet both perform

crucial intellectual functions; shaping how people see the world, oppose hegemony, and

understand their own history. In contrast, the careers of C.L.R. James and Stuart Hall

reflect a dynamic blend of the traditional and the vernacular. Conventionally trained and

situated, James and Hall explain racism, history, and the lasting impact of colonialism

that draw on cultural experiences.

Postcolonial writers Adichie and Chinua Achebe get deservedly labelled as

vernacular intellectuals as their narratives incontestably intervenes into society’s thinking

evolving out of their identity and position. Their semi-autobiographical works represent a

critical social engagement that demonstrates the thought processes of subaltern life. Most

of their fictional characters can be considered the same. The Kenyan writers Gakaara wa

Wanjau and Ngugi wa Thiong’o who write in Gikuyu were ardent supporters of the Mau

Mau as a nationalist and revolutionary movement and participated directly in grassroots

cultural renewal, enduring imprisonment and exile as a consequence of their engagement

in political action; thus being vernacular intellectuals themselves.Krishna has the same
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role in Bhagavath Gita, so do other spiritual leaders like Prophet Mohammad(S), Buddha

and Mahavira.

Albert Camus famously quotes in his work Myth of Sisyphus, “Beginning to think

is beginning to be undermined”. This holds true when considering that the vast majority

abstain from thelabours involved, and the sense of flux that characterise independent

thinking. They look for the comforting certitude of any authority they can abdicate this

responsibility to, so they have a solidity and a lowered burden of individual jurisdiction.

Yet thinking is an innate capacity and faculty and despite regimentation, inertia,

restriction, decadence, routinisation, etc. thought keeps resurging like plant species,

adapting to climates and terrains, but with a tendency to flower. When there is neat

topiary and formal presentation, we see the academia- refined style, but thinking like

vegetation is sprouting and branching all the time. Great cultures organise orchards where

good fruit can be picked only when ripe, and distributed.

These will be explained in detail in the following chapters. Chapter Two discusses

vernacular intellectuals in the literature of the Posstcolonial period, while Chapter Three

finds these elements in the life and works of third-generation Nigerian novelist

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Chapter Four, is the heart of this thesis, and proves that

Ugwu in Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a vernacular intellectual. Chapter Five

concludes the whole project. While going through these pages it will dawn on the reader

the qualities of a vernacular intellectual and their need in societal development.

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Chapter 1

Politics of Oppositionality in Postcolonial Literature

“Literature,” reiterated DeBonald, “is an expression ofsociety “. A writer

inevitably expresses his experience and total conception of life; but it would be

manifestly untrue to say that he expresses the whole of life- or even the whole of a given

time- completely and exhaustively. Literature is a faithful reproduction of man's manifold

experiences blended into one harmonious expression. It deals with ideas, thoughts, and

emotions of man. Literature can be said to be the story of man's love, grievances, dreams,

aspirations and thoughts coached in beautiful language. The changes that are seen in

literature are those which have been in the society that the writer lives in. Literature, as an

imitation of human action, often presents a picture of what people think, say and do in the

society.

Literature influences society in the same way, perhaps even more, society is

influenced by literature. It was Bertolt Brecht who opined, “Art is not only a mirror to

reflect the society but a hammer to shape it.” People’s idea of reality, history and even

self-worth are all influenced by the books they read. Books containing history teach

people the past, fictional stories influence people’s perception of society and moral. In a

typical society, literature is usually the best way for its dwellers, especially those

considered to be on the lower strata to raise their voices and impose their opinions among

the rest. Literature does not merely describe our world but they also have the unique and

underappreciated power to make people aware of how we can change accustomed forms
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of perception and action. It also helps the members of the society to realise where they go

wrong, and how they can be better.

Literature plays an important role in the instilling of radical and antithetical ideas

to reach the desired audience. While this task is in itself one done by vernacular

intellectuals, it is done at times by introducing characters who are vernacular intellectuals

in their own fame. Most of this is found in Post Colonial literature, which relates to the

colonizer-colonized experience or of the suppression of the educated elite in newly

independent countries.

Since the 1980s, numerous novelists, dramatists, and poets have been marketed as

postcolonial writers. But what is postcolonial literature? In the broadest terms, this

category includes works that have a relationship to the subjugating forces of imperialism

and colonial expansion. In short, postcolonial literature is that which has arisen primarily

since the end of World War II from regions of the world undergoing decolonization.

Works from such regions in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as the Indian subcontinent,

Nigeria, South Africa, and numerous parts of the Caribbean, for example, might be

described as postcolonial. 

In order to understand the rising attention to postcolonial fiction, a basic

understanding of postcolonial theory is necessary. Keep in mind, this is a very short

history and is by no means all-inclusive! If you’re interested in postcolonial theory, you

might start with some of the writers we’re about to discuss before moving onto your own

explorations of the topic.

Many of the debates among postcolonial scholars center on which national

literatures or authors can be justifiably included in the postcolonial canon. Much of the

discussion among postcolonial scholars involves criticisms of the term “postcolonial”

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itself. In addition, it is seldom mentioned but quite striking that very few actual authors of

the literature under discussion embrace and use the term to label their own writing.

It should be acknowledged that postcolonial theory functions as a subdivision

within the even more misleadingly named field of “cultural studies”: the whole body of

generally leftist radical literary theory and criticism which includes Marxist, Gramscian,

Foucauldian, and various feminist schools of thought, among others. What all of these

schools of thought have in common is a determination to analyze unjust power

relationships as manifested in cultural products like literature (and film, art, etc.).

Practitioners generally consider themselves politically engaged and committed to some

variety or other of liberation process.

It is also important to understand that not all postcolonial scholars are literary

scholars. Postcolonial theory is applied to political science, to history, and to other related

fields. People who call themselves postcolonial scholars generally see themselves as part

of a large (if poorly defined and disorganized) movement to expose and struggle against

the influence of large, rich nations (mostly European, plus the U.S.) on poorer nations

(mostly in the southern hemisphere).

Taken literally, the term “postcolonial literature” would seem to label literature written by

people living in countries formerly colonized by other nations. This is undoubtedly what

the term originally meant, but there are many problems with this definition.

First, literal colonization is not the exclusive object of postcolonial study. Lenin’s

classic analysis of imperialism led to Antonio Gramisci’s concept of “hegemony” which

distinguishes between literal political dominance and dominance through ideas and

culture (what many critics of American influence call the “Coca-Colanization” of the

world). Sixties thinkers developed the concept of neo-imperialism to label relationships

like that between the U.S. and many Latin American countries which, while nominally
 8

independent, had economies dominated by American business interests, often backed up

by American military forces. The term “banana republic” was originally a sarcastic label

for such subjugated countries, ruled more by the influence of the United Fruit Corporation

than by their own indigenous governments.

Second, among the works commonly studied under this label are novels like

Claude McKay’s Banjo and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which were written

while the nations in question (Jamaica and Nigeria) were still colonies. Some scholars

attempt to solve this problem by arguing that the term should denote works written after

colonization, not only those created after independence; but that would be

“postcolonization” literature. Few people understand the term in this sense outside a small

circle of scholars working in the field.

Third, some critics argue that the term misleadingly implies that colonialism is

over when in fact most of the nations involved are still culturally and economically

subordinated to the rich industrial states through various forms of neo-colonialism even

though they are technically independent.

Fourth, it can be argued that this way of defining a whole era is Eurocentric, that it

singles out the colonial experience as the most important fact about the countries

involved. Surely that experience has had many powerful influences; but this is not

necessarily the framework within which writers from–say–India, who have a long history

of precolonial literature, wish to be viewed.

For instance, R. K. Narayan–one of the most popular and widely read of modern

Indian writers–displays a remarkable indifference to the historical experience of

colonialism, a fact which results in his being almost entirely ignored by postcolonial

scholars. V. S. Naipaul is so fierce a critic of the postcolonial world despite his origins as
 9

a descendant of Indian indentured laborers in Trinidad that he is more often cited as an

opponent than as an ally in the postcolonial struggle.

In fact, it is not uncommon for citizens of “postcolonial” countries to accuse

Americans and Europeans of practicing a form of neocolonialism themselves in viewing

their history through this particular lens. Postcolonial criticism could be compared to the

tendency of Hollywood films set in such countries to focus on the problems of Americans

and Europeans within those societies while marginalizing the views of their native

peoples.

Fifth, many “postcolonial” authors do not share the general orientation of postcolonial

scholars toward engaging in an ongoing critique of colonialism. Nigerian writers Chinua

Achebe and Wole Soyinka, for instance, after writing powerful indictments of the British

in their country, turned to exposing the deeds of native-born dictators and corrupt officials

within their independent homeland. Although postcolonial scholars would explain this

corruption as a by-product of colonialism, such authors commonly have little interest in

pursuing this train of thought.

Although there has been sporadic agitation in some African quarters for

reparations for the slavery era, most writers of fiction, drama, and poetry see little point in

continually rehashing the past to solve today’s problems. It is striking how little modern

fiction from formerly colonized nations highlights the colonial past. Non-fiction writers

often point out that Hindu-Muslim conflicts in South Asia are in part the heritage of

attempts by the British administration in India to play the two groups of against each

other (not to mention the special role assigned to the Sikhs in the British army); yet Indian

fiction about these conflicts rarely points to such colonial causes. A good example is

Kushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956) which deals directly with the partition of

India from an almost exclusively Indian perspective.

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Indeed, “postcolonial” writers often move to England or North America (because

they have been exiled, or because they find a more receptive audience there, or simply in

search of a more comfortable mode of living) and even sometimes–like Soyinka–call

upon the governments of these “neocolonialist” nations to come to the aid of freedom

movements seeking to overthrow native tyrants.

Sixth, “postcolonialism” as a term lends itself to very broad use. Australians and

Canadians sometimes claim to live in postcolonial societies, but many would refuse them

the label because their literature is dominated by European immigrants, and is therefore a

literature of privilege rather than of protest. According to the usual postcolonial paradigm

only literature written by native peoples in Canada and Australia would truly qualify.

Similarly, the label is usually denied to U.S. literature, though America’s identity was

formed in contradistinction to that of England, because the U.S. is usually viewed as the

very epitome of a modern neo-colonial nation, imposing its values, economic pressures,

and political interests on a wide range of weaker countries.

The Irish are often put forward as an instance of a postcolonial European people,

and indeed many African writers have been inspired by Irish ones for that reason. Yet

some of the more nationalist ones (like Yeats) tended toward distressingly conservative–

even reactionary–politics, and James Joyce had the utmost contempt for Irish nationalism.

It is not clear how many Irish authors would have accepted the term if they had known of

it.

Although postcolonial theory generally confines itself to the past half-century, it

can be argued that everyone has been colonized at some time or other. Five thousand

years ago Sumer started the process by uniting formerly independent city-states, and

Narmer similarly subjugated formerly independent Upper and Lower Egypt. Rushdie
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likes to point out that England itself is a postcolonial nation, having been conquered by

Romans and Normans, among others.

Not only is the term “postcolonial” exceedingly fuzzy, it can also be argued that it

is also often ineffective. A good deal of postcolonial debate has to do with rival claims to

victimhood, with each side claiming the sympathies of right-thinking people because of

their past sufferings. The conflicts between Bosnians and Serbs, Palestinians and Jews,

Turks and Greeks, Hindu and Muslim Indians, and Catholic and Protestant Irish illustrate

the problems with using historical suffering as justification for a political program. It is

quite true that Europeans and Americans often arrogantly dismiss their own roles in

creating the political messes of postcolonial nations around the world; but it is unclear

how accusations against them promote the welfare of those nations. In addition, when

they are made to feel guilty, countries–like individuals–are as likely to behave badly as

they are to behave generously.

It may make American and European scholars feel better to disassociate

themselves from the crimes of their ancestors (which are admittedly, enormously bloody

and oppressive, and should be acknowledged and studied–see resources below), but

people struggling for freedom in oppressed nations are more likely to draw inspiration

from the quintessentially European Enlightenment concept of rights under natural law

than they are to turn to postcolonial theory. Similarly, European capitalist market theory

is far more attractive to most people struggling against poverty in these nations than are

the varieties of socialism propounded by postcolonial theoreticians.

“Postcolonial” is also a troublesome term because it draws some very arbitrary

lines. South African writers Athol Fugard and Nadine Gordimer are often excluded from

postcolonial courses, although their works were powerful protests against apartheid and

they have lived and worked far more in Africa than, say, Buchi Emicheta, who emigrated
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to England as a very young woman and has done all of her writing there–because they are

white. A host of fine Indian writers is neglected simply because they do not write in

English on the sensible grounds that India has a millennia-long tradition of writing which

should not be arbitrarily linked to the British imperial episode.

Of those who write in English, Anita Desai is included, though she is half German.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is included even though he now writes primarily in Gikuyu. Bharati

Mukherjee specifically rejects the label “Indian-American,” though she is an immigrant

from India, and Rushdie prefers to be thought of as a sort of multinational hybrid (though

he has, on occasion, used the label “postcolonial” in his own writing). Hanif Kureishi is

more English than Pakistani in his outlook, and many Caribbean-born writers living in

England are now classed as “Black British.” What determines when you are too

acculturated to be counted as postcolonial: where you were born? how long you’ve lived

abroad? your subject matter? These and similar questions are the object of constant

debate.

In fact, postcolonial theoretician Homi Bhabha developed the term “hybridity” to

capture the sense that many writers have of belonging to both cultures. More and more

writers, like Rushdie, reject the older paradigm of “exile” which was meaningful to

earlier generations of emigrants in favor of accepting their blend of cultures as a positive

synthesis. This celebration of cultural blending considerably blurs the boundaries laid

down by postcolonial theory.

In practice, postcolonial literary studies are often sharply divided along linguistic

lines in a way which simply reinforces Eurocentric attitudes. Latin American postcolonial

studies are seldom explored by those laboring in English departments. Francophone

African literature is generally neglected by Anglophone African scholars. Because of

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these failures to cut across linguistic boundaries, the roles of England and France are

exaggerated over those of the colonized regions.

It can even be asked whether the entire premise of postcolonial studies is valid: that

examining these literatures can give voice to formerly suppressed peoples. This is the

question asked by Gayatri Spivak in her famous essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Using

Antonio Gramsci’s arcane label for oppressed people, she points out that anyone who has

achieved enough literacy and sophistication to produce a widely-read piece of fiction is

almost certainly by that very fact disqualified from speaking for the people he or she is

supposed to represent. The “Subaltern Group” of Indian scholars has tried to claim the

term to support their own analyses (a similar project exists among Latin American

scholars), but the nagging question raised by Spivak remains.

It is notable that whenever writers from the postcolonial world like Soyinka, Derek

Walcott, or Rushdie receive wide recognition they are denounced as unrepresentative and

inferior to other, more obscure but more “legitimate” spokespeople.

This phenomenon is related to the question of “essentialism” which features so

largely in contemporary political and literary theory. Usually the term is used negatively,

to describe stereotypical ideas of–to take as an example my own ancestors–the Irish as

drunken, irresponsible louts. However, protest movements built on self-esteem resort to

essentialism in a positive sense, as in the many varieties of “black pride” movements

which have emerged at various times, with the earliest perhaps being the concept of

“négritude” developed by Caribbean and African writers living in Paris in the 1930s and

40s. However, each new attempt to create a positive group identity tends to be seen by at

least some members of the group as restrictive, as a new form of oppressive essentialism.

Faced with the dilemma of wanting to make positive claims for certain ethnic groups or

nationalities while simultaneously acknowledging individualism, some critics have put

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forward the concept of “strategic essentialism” in which one can speak in rather

simplified forms of group identity for the purposes of struggle while debating within the

group the finer shades of difference.

There are two major problems with this strategy, however. First, there are always

dissenters within each group who speak out against the new corporate identity, and they

are especially likely to be taken seriously by the very audiences targeted by strategic

essentialism. Second, white conservatives have caught on to this strategy: they routinely

denounce affirmative action, for instance, by quoting Martin Luther King, as if his only

goal was “color blindness” rather than real economic and social equality. They snipe,

fairly effectively, at any group which puts forward corporate claims for any ethnic group

by calling them racist. Strategic essentialism envisions a world in which internal debates

among oppressed people can be sealed off from public debates with oppressors. Such a

world does not exist.

Similarly, “strategic postcolonialism” is likely to be a self-defeating strategy, since

most writers on the subject publicly and endlessly debate the problems associated with

the term. In addition, the label is too fuzzy to serve as a useful tool for long in any

exchange of polemics. It lacks the sharp edge necessary to make it serve as a useful

weapon.

However, those of us unwilling to adopt the label “postcolonial” are hard put to find

an appropriate term for what we study. The old “Commonwealth literature” is obviously

too confining and outdated as well as being extremely Eurocentric. “Anglophone

literature” excludes the many rich literatures of Africa, for instance, written in European

languages other than English, and taken in the literal sense, it does not distinguish

between mainstream British and American writing and the material under discussion.

“New literature written in English” (or “englishes” as some say) puts too much emphasis
 15

on newness (McKay is hardly new) and again excludes the non-English-speaking world.

“Third-world” makes no sense since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist

“second world.” “Literature of developing nations” buys into an economic paradigm

which most “postcolonial” scholars reject.

The more it is examined, the more the postcolonial sphere crumbles. Though

Jamaican, Nigerian, and Indian writers have much to say to each other; it is not clear that

they should be lumped together. We continue to use the term “postcolonial” as a pis

aller, and to argue about it until something better comes along.

In 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was published in French.

Arising out of the Algerian struggle for independence from France, the text examined

possibilities for anti-colonial violence in the region and elsewhere. Fanon was a

Martinique-born intellectual who was also a member of the Algerian National Liberation

Front, and his writings have inspired numerous people across the globe in struggles for

freedom from oppression and racially motivated violence. If you’re particularly interested

in Fanon as a collector, you might seek out first editions of Fanon’s work. Grove Press

published the first U.S. edition of The Wretched of the Earth in 1963, with a translated

forward by Jean-Paul Sartre.

By 1979, Edward Said had written Orientalism, a text examining the relationship

between those in the West and the “Other” in the East. This work has become a staple in

postcolonial courses, and it helped to expand the field over the last few decades. Said was

a Palestinian-American scholar who taught at Columbia University for the majority of his

academic career. Other important early thinkers in postcolonial theory, just to name a

couple, include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha.

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While the field of postcolonial studies only began taking shape in the late 1970s

and early 1980s, numerous fiction writers began publishing works in the decades

immediately following World War II. One of the most significant postcolonial novels to

emerge in this period was Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). This novel now

graces many Anglophone fiction course syllabi, which isn’t a surprise given its enormous

popularity and importance when it first was published.

Published in the late 1950s, Achebe wrote the book at the end of the British

colonial period in Nigeria but depicted an earlier moment in Nigerian history. The novel

tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo village leader in the late 19th century who must

witness the tragic demise of his culture at the hands of colonialism. Nigeria remained a

British colony until 1960. If you’re interested in adding one of Achebe’s works to your

collection, you might look for a first U.K. edition of Things Fall Apart, published by

William Heinemann Ltd. in 1958, or a first American edition published a year later in

New York by McDowell Obolensky.

Even before Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, Nadine Gordimer had

already written one book and several short-story collections, and she was in the process of

publishing her second novel. A South African writer of Eastern European origin,

Gordimer didn’t personally experience the racial discrimination and violence that arose

from decolonization and the institution of apartheid, but she nonetheless spent her career

advocating for equal rights in her country. Some of her most notable works that deal with

postcolonial politics and the stark harms of apartheid include The

Conservationist (1974), Burger’s Daughter (1979), and July’s People (1981). A signed

copy of one of Gordimer’s works would make a fantastic edition to any postcolonial

literature collection.
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Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966) is another significant and

early work of postcolonial fiction. A bildungsroman of sorts, Salih’s novel follows an

unnamed protagonist as he returns to his Sudanese village after years of education abroad

in England only to learn of the devastating effects of imperialism. The novel was

originally written in Arabic, and it was published in English for the first time in 1969.

When it comes to plays, Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970)

helped to set the world stage for postcolonial dramatists. A writer from Saint Lucia,

Walcott’s works frequently depict the colonial harms of the West Indies. Indeed, his

plays, as well as his poems, encourage his readers to question the history and politics of

the Caribbean, and its role as a postcolonial site through which we might renegotiate

remedies for imperialism.

Since writers like Achebe, Gordimer, Tayeb Salih, and Derek Walcott laid

the groundwork for the global circulation of postcolonial fiction, numerous writers from

across the world have begun publishing novels, plays, and collections of poetry that speak

to the injuries of colonial violence. From the Indian subcontinent, a number of young and

notable novelists have depicted the destructive force of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition

and the Caste System in the region through their works. Examples include Salman

Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children  (1981), Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines (1988), Bapsi

Sidhwa’s Cracking India (1991), Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), and

Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters (1998).

In addition to novels pertaining to the India-Pakistan Partition, which occurred as

a result of British decolonization, Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry collections have been

extremely influential. The poet was born in New Delhi in 1949, just a couple of years

after Partition. He was raised in Kashmir and attended university there before moving to
 18

the United States. According to Bruce King, Agha Shahid Ali’s poems contain

“obsessions with . . . memory, death, history, family ancestors, nostalgia for a past he

never knew, dreams, Hindu ceremonies, friendships, and self-consciousness about being a

poet.” His collection A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987) garnered international

acclaim, while The Country Without a Post Office (1997) directly contended with

lingering colonial harms on the subcontinent.

Returning to Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work is some of the most

recent to deal with the aftermath of imperialism in West Africa. If you’re just learning

about Adichie’s work, we recommend starting with her first novel, Purple

Hibiscus (2003), or her second work, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), which deals with the

aftermath of decolonization and the Biafran War.

The problems that intellectuals face are compounded further on women. These

difficulties are explored in Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come. It is a novel about the

coming of age journey of Enitan, a middle class Yoruba girl living in lagos with her

family. Atta provides us with examples of how woman are finding ways out of the

traditional limitations of the home without necessarily completely rejecting the traditional

way of life, thus successfully finding a balanced position among the urban/rural

continuum. Her characterisation of Sheri and Enitan serves to subvert the use of the

kitchen and motherhood as means of keeping women subjected specifically by using

motherhood and the space of the kitchen to their own advantage. Enitan takes on an active

and practical role as vernacular intellectual when she realises that eing done to her

country by the Nigerian government and Nigerians themselves, who remain silent about

it, outweighs the risk of imprisonment or death for standing against it. She realises that it
 19

was important to act as a vernacular intellectual, because of her need to engage a wider

audience on matters affecting both male and female Nigerians more directly. Grace,

another character, is one of the rare cases in which a woman has family that supports her

in her work as a writer, journalist and intellectual. She once tells Enitan,

“...you have a voice, which is what I always tell people. Use your

voice to bring about change. Some people in the country, what

chance do they have? Born into poverty, hungry from childhood,

no formal education. It amazes me that privileged people in

Nigeria believe that doing nothing is an option.”

(Everything Good Will Come- pg- 259)

Grace fights because if she does not speak out for herself, who will? Atta is

making the point that most people are either too afraid to speak out against injustice, too

focused on their own survival, or they simply don’t care enough. There will always be

someone who will always be willing to push past the fear and risk it all to be heard. Sheri

is another character in the story who is raped, and becomes infertile while aborting the

baby with a clothes hanger. She ‘became part of the sugar-daddy circuit in Lagos’ to help

keep her and her family alive. She does not allow herself to be treated as a rich brigadier’s

possession, but retains her self-worth as a woman and chooses her battle well. She is

willing to be his mistress in return for a furnished apartment and money to support her

family. She starts a catering business with her stepmothers and their children, which later

expands to include a family restaurant. She uses the kitchen to empower herself rather

than be enslaved by it. She also starts a charity for street children, in the manner of

Mammywata. She becomes a subtle type of vernacular intellectual through the use of the

Mammywata tripe.
 20

In Chris Abani’s 2004 novel GraceLand, Elvis is a character who hasn’t

completed school. Inexperienced and naive, he attempts to survive in the chaotic Lagos

by making a living for himself. The characters Sunday and Caesar fulfil the requirements

as vernacular intellectuals. Caesar often participates in anti-government campaigns which

include the performance of plays and reading poetry, which is intently listened to by the

audience. He also gives Elvis an informal education, and gives him an alternative to a

world of criminal action. As part of a government campaign, the inhabitants of Elvis’

slum are faced with eviction. The slum dwellers offered Sunday, Elvis’ father, a chance to

lead them in their stand against the government. He mobilises them to alert the press, and

protest against the destruction of their homes. This resistance campaign belies the

widespread belief that slum dwellers are incapable of organizing themselves and asserting

their collective agency. Sunday has thus arisen as a vernacular intellectual from the slum

and succeeds in mobilising a whole community into action.

In Jeffrey Shandler’s Shtetl:A Vernacular Intellectual History, he descrbes how

Jewish life in provincial towns in Eastern Europe became the subject of extensive

creativity, memory, and scholarship, from the early modern era in European history to the

present. He contends that in the aftermath of the Holocaust, intellectual engagement with

the shtetl (Yiddish for town) emerged in various cultural forms.

Paul Rayment, the morose protagonist of J.M.Coetzee’s Slow Man is an amputee

who must learn to adapt after losing a leg in a road accident. Throughout the novel, he

bemoans about childlessness, and how it was seen as a virtue in an overpopulated world.

The novel also examines the relationship between national identities, ethnicity and

stereotyping through the medium of Rayment’s photography collection. In it, Coetzee

introduces Elizabeth Costello for the second time after Elizabeth Costello, his eponymous

vernacular intellectual, often speaks as a legislator, which makes her performance seem
 21

anachronistic, but Coetzee embeds her sppech within fiction, thus playing the role of

interpreter, mediating between Costello’s world of hard-earned intuitions, opinions, and

rights, and ours, which needs to know what game is being played.

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man the nameless narrator declares, “I am invisible,

understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” His identity has been dictated by a

white-dominated society. He is on a lifelong struggle to survive as a Black man in White

America. He suffers from amnesia and forgets everything, even his name. Convinced that

his existence depends on gaining the support, recognition, and approval of whites whom

he has been taught to view as powerful, superior beings who control his destiny the

narrator spends nearly 20 years trying to establish his humanity in a society that refuses to

see him as a human being.Ultimately, he realizes that he must create his own identity,

which rests not on the acceptance of whites, but on his own acceptance of the past. He is

the face of the anti-slavery movement, the one people recognize.

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun, Ugwu changes from

the innocent and naive village boy we meet in the first chapter, who keeps chicken wings

in his pockets. He has grown up during the Biafran war. He has loved, lost and fought. In

the end it is understood that it was Ugwu who wrote The World Was Silent When We

Died. He has surpassed his master Odenigbo in the new Nigeria because it is up to

Ugwu’s generation to build from the ashes. He also gives a voice to the voiceless. His

book tells the story of all, from middle class intellectuals(Odenigbo) to bush woman(his

sister).In the novel Madu Madu, a general asks Richard, a white journalist to report

against his people’s misdeeds in Nigeria taking advantage of the unrest in Biafra. Madu

Madu says;

“Of course I asked because you are white. They will take what
 22

you write more seriously because you are white. Look, the truth

is that this is not your war. This is not your cause. Your government

will evacuate you in a minute if you ask them to. So it is not enough

to carry limp branches and shout power, power to show that you

support Biafra. If you really want to contribute, this is the way that

you can. The world has to know the truth of what is happening,

because they simply cannot remain silent while we die.”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg- 130)

The prevailing paradigms, the influential ideologies, the available or allowed

media in our environment, and the stimuli or lack of them that pulled original responses

from us has failed to create the necessary ‘dent’ in our universe by moulding and shaping

our thinking patterns and frameworks. ‘Intellectual’is a term used for people who realise

they have the capacity and other requisites to ponder about social, national and planetary

questions far more than others. The truth is that this is a capacity that can be cultivated in

all human minds where there is willingness.

 23

CHAPTER 2

Litanies of Speaking Out Through The Scribblings of Adichie

Since a call was issued in the 1960s and 1970s for the Africanisation of literary

studies in Africa – with the intention of enriching the intellectual life of Africans – the

writing and teaching of African literature seem to have declined across the continent. This

is partly due to political crises that plague numerous African countries and the consequent

migration of many of its best scholars and authors mainly to Europe and the United

States. Many of the third generation Nigerian authors, as well as African scholars from

elsewhere in Africa, currently live outside of Africa either permanently or for extended

periods of time, and are often part of western educational institutions. Many of these

African scholars, authors and intellectuals are still considered authorities on matters

pertaining to Africa while the works produced in Africa itself are often overlooked , but

this is not to say that those works produced by writers outside the continent are

necessarily vastly different from those produced by authors still living in Africa or that

works from the continent should be viewed as either more or less important than those

produced outside the continent.

The third generation Nigerian novelists provides us with new perspectives on the

postcolonial world and how it fits into the contemporary, globalised world. In their

discussion on this third generation, Pius Adesanmi and Chris Dunton state that while both

the first and second generation African writers were born during colonisation, the

“formative years” of the second generation “were mostly shaped by independence and its

aftermath of disillusionment and stasis”. Younger novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi

 24

Adichie, Chris Abani and Chika Unigwe are heirs to the Nigerian literary tradition and

symbols of a new creative movement. Like Achebe and Soyinka, they explore the cultural

and social complexities of their country of origin, but they examine other themes as well,

among which immigration to Europe and America. Beyond thematic innovation, the

younger writer’s work alsoconveys a new type of sensitivity: for example, their narratives

show a particular interest in the exploration of characters’ emotional development. Third

generation Nigerian novelists include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chika Unigwe, Chris

Abani, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila and Helen Oyeyemi.

Adichie, who was born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria, grew up as the fifth of six

children in an Igbo family in the university town of Nsukka in Enugu State. While she

was growing up, her father, James Nwoye Adichie, was a professor of statistics at

the University of Nigeria, and her mother, Grace Ifeoma, was the university's first

female registrar. Her family's ancestral village is in Aba in Anambra State.

Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a

half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university's

Catholic medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to

study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She

soon transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University to be near her sister Uche, who

had a medical practice in Coventry. When the novelist was growing up in Nigeria, she

was not used to being identified by the colour of her skin. That changed when she arrived

in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly

confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea

became something that she had to navigate and learn. She writes about this in her

novel Americanah. She received a bachelor's degree from Eastern, with the distinction

of summa cum laude in 2001.

 25

In 2003, she completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins

University. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale

University.

Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–06 academic

year. In 2008 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded a 2011–

12 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Adichie divides her time between Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops, and

the United States. In 2016 she was conferred an honorary degree - Doctor of Humane

letters, honoris causa, by Johns Hopkins University.  In 2017 she was conferred honorary

degrees - Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Haverford College, and The

University of Edinburgh.

In an interview published in the Financial Times in July 2016, Adichie revealed that

she had a baby daughter. In a profile of Adichie, published in The New Yorker in June

2018, Larissa MacFarquhar wrote, "the man she ended up marrying, in 2009, was almost

comically suitable: a Nigerian doctor who practiced in America, whose father was a

doctor and a friend of her parents."

Adichie published a collection of poems in 1997 (Decisions) and a play (For Love

of Biafra) in 1998. She was shortlisted in 2002 for the Caine Prize  for her short story

"You in America", and her story "That Harmattan Morning" was selected as a joint

winner of the 2002 BBC World Service Short Story Awards. In 2003, she won the O.

Henry Award for "The American Embassy", and the David T. Wong International Short

Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award). Her stories were also published in Zoetrope:

All-Story, and Topic Magazine.

 26

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), received wide critical acclaim; it was

shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth

Writers' Prizefor Best First Book (2005). Purple Hibiscus starts with an extended quote

from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), named after the flag of the shortlived

nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Nigerian Civil War. It received the 2007

Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Half of a Yellow Sun has

been adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele,

starring BAFTA award-winner and Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and

BAFTA winner Thandie Newton, and was released in 2014.

Adichie's third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of 12

stories that explore the relationships between men and women, parents and children,

Africa and the United States.

In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s "20 Under 40" Fiction

Issue. Adichie's story "Ceiling" was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American

Short Stories.

Her third novel, Americanah (2013), an exploration of a young Nigerian

encountering race in America, was selected by The New York Times as one of "The 10

Best Books of 2013".

In April 2014, she was named as one of 39 writers aged under 40  in the Hay

Festival and Rainbow Book Club project Africa39, celebrating Port

Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014. In 2015, she was co-curator of the PEN

World Voices Festival.

 27

In a 2014 interview, Adichie said on feminism and writing, "I think of myself as a

storyteller, but I would not mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist

writer... I'm very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that world view must

somehow be part of my work."

In March 2017, Americanah was picked as the winner for the "One Book, One New

York" program, part of a community reading initiative encouraging all city residents to

read the same book.

In April 2017, it was announced that Adichie had been elected into the 237th class of

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the highest honours for intellectuals

in the United States, as one of 228 new members to be inducted on 7 October 2017.

Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen

Suggestions, published in March 2017,  had its origins in a letter Adichie wrote to a friend

who had asked for advice about how to raise her daughter as a feminist.

Probably the most popular of the new generation writers are Chimamanda Ngozi

Adichie, whose most popular works are her novelsPurple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun

andAmericanah. Apart from being a novelist, she’s a nonfiction and short story writer.

She has been called ‘the most prominent’ of a ‘procession of critically acclaimed young

anglophone authors [that] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to

African literature’.

Adichie spoke on "The Danger of a Single Story" for TED in 2009. It has become

one of the top ten most-viewed TED Talks of all time, with more than fifteen million

views. On 15 March 2012, she delivered the "Connecting Cultures" Commonwealth

Lecture 2012 at the Guildhall, London. Adichie also spoke on being a feminist for TED
 28

Euston in December 2012, with her speech entitled, "We should all be feminists". It

initiated a worldwide conversation on feminism and was published as a book in 2014. It

was sampled for the 2013 song "Flawless" by American performer Beyoncé, where it

attracted further attention.

Chimamanda Adichie stated in her talk “The Danger of a Single Story” that every

time she returns to Nigeria she is faced with complaints about the failed government and

infrastructure and so on, but is also inspired, “by the incredible resilience of people who

thrive despite the government, rather than because of it”.

Adichie spoke in a TED talk entitled "The Danger of a Single Story", posted in July

2009. In it, she expresses her concern for underrepresentation of various cultures. She

explains that, as a young child, she had often read American and British stories where the

characters were primarily of Caucasian origin.

At the lecture, she said that the underrepresentation of cultural differences could be

dangerous: "Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my

imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was

that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature."

Throughout the lecture, she used personal anecdotes to illustrate the importance of

sharing different stories. She briefly talks about the houseboy that was working for her

family whose name is Fide, and how the only thing she knew about him was how poor his

family was. However, when Adichie's family visited Fide's village, Fide's mother showed

them a basket that Fide's brother had made, making her realize that she created her

opinion about Fide based on only one story of him. Adichie said, "It had not occurred to

me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them

was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything
 29

else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them." She also said that when

leaving Nigeria to go to Drexel University, she encountered the effects of the

underrepresentation of her own culture. Her American roommate was surprised that

Adichie was fluent in English and that she did not listen to tribal music. She said of this:

"My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single

story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility

of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals."

Adichie concluded the lecture by noting the significance of different stories in

various cultures and the representation that they deserve. She advocated for a greater

understanding of stories because people are complex, saying that by only understanding a

single story, one misinterprets people, their backgrounds, and their histories.

Therefore, the characters in her novels are viewed as actively trying to create a life

for themselves and it is often their participation in the course of globalisation that allows

them to do so. In the process they put their Nigerian stamp on global ideas and

commodities. These characters may be largely powerless to combat or counteract the

forces of neo-colonialism, but they seem to be trying to make the best of the situation and

thus survive by incorporating the global into the local.

In 2012, Adichie gave a TEDx talk entitled: "We should all be feminists", delivered at

TedXEuston in London, which has been viewed more than four million times. She shared

her experiences of being an African feminist, and her views on gender construction and

sexuality. Adichie said that the problem with gender is that it shapes who we are. She also

said: "I am angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. We should all be

angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change, but in addition to
 30

being angry, I’m also hopeful because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to

make and remake themselves for the better." Parts of Adichie's TEDx talk were sampled

in Beyoncé's song "Flawless" in December 2013.

Harper-Collins published an essay based on the speech as a standalone volume, We

Should All Be Feminists, in 2014. She later said in an NPR interview that "anything that

gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing." She later qualified the

statement in an interview with the Dutch magazine De Volkskrant: "Another thing I hated

was that I read everywhere: now people finally know her, thanks to Beyoncé, or: she must

be very grateful. I found that disappointing. I thought: I am a writer and I have been for

some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me:

'Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again.' That's why I didn't speak about

it much."

Adichie has clarified that her particular feminism differs from Beyoncé's, particularly

in their disagreements about the role occupied by men in women's lives, saying that "Her

style is not my style, but I do find it interesting that she takes a stand in political and

social issues, since a few years. She portrays a woman who is in charge of her own

destiny, who does her own thing, and she has girl power. I am very taken with

that." Nevertheless, she has been outspoken against critics who question the singer's

credentials as a feminist and said that "Whoever says they’re feminist is bloody feminist."

Chimamanda Adichie has earned reputation as a master story-teller with a fresh,

lyrical and irreverent voice. Adichie’s novels are mostly written in the bildungsroman

style, tracing the development and transformation of characters in all aspects. She usually

uses family relations to be a mirror to understand the political set up at the time. She has
 31

also introduced embedded narratives in certain works. Her characters are driven by

impulses that they may not be consciously aware of, which is true to human beings. Her

novels unfold through the perspective of multiple characters, each differing from the next.

Adichie’s third novelAmericanah traces the younger years of two intelligent

Nigerians, Ifemelu and Obinze, and their transformation into adults facing stark questions

about race, cultural identity and social difference in their adventures

abroad. In Americanah, Adichie fearlessly takes on what is so euphemistically called

“American race relations.” The heroine, Ifemelu, a Nigerian transplant to the United

States, writes a blog, that’s tartlytitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations about

American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black,” in

which she scrutinizes Obamamania, white privilege, the politics of black hair care,

interracial relationships, and the allure and savagery of America.When Ifemelu babysits

for her new employer, Kimberly, they flick through a magazine together and Ifemelu

notices that Kimberly seems to have a tendency to label each black-skinned figure

‘beautiful’:

“Oh, look at this beautiful woman,” and [she] pointed at a plain

model in a magazine whose only distinguishing feature was her

very dark skin. “Isn’t she just stunning?” “No, she isn’t.” Ifemelu

paused. “You know, you can just say ‘black.’Not every black person

is beautiful.” Kimberly was taken aback, something wordless spread

on her face and then she smiled, and Ifemelu would think of it as

the moment they became, truly, friends."”

(Americanah- pg- 146)

 32

It was this friendship between Kimberly and Ifemelu that helpedIfemelu learn to speak up

on her own. She found her own voice instead of silently bearing everything all along, and

it also led to her starting her own blog.Her blog was a platform for her to confront all

injustice she saw around her.

Many of the stories in the anthology, The Thing Around Your Neck’ by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, explore a generation of Nigerians whose lives have been

disrupted by wars and colonialism. The loss of African traditions, exposure to Western

lifestyles and values, immigration and globalism present many challenges for Adichie’s

main characters who are often unable to define and articulate their anxieties and

the Through Nnamabia’s change in attitude and behaviour in Cell One, Adichie suggests

that individuals must stand up for one’s principles and help those who lack a voice or who

are completely victimized by the (political) system.  Adichie believes that the various

ethnicities must overcome their differences. Each must show compassion and tolerance

towards the other in order to live a peaceful and fulfilling life. 

Adichie's novel Purple Hibiscus takes place in Enugu, a city in post-colonial

Nigeria. It is narrated by the main character, Kambili Achike. She lives under the strict

Catholic rule of her father, who expects his children to succeed at all costs. As political

unrest seizes Nigeria, Kambili is introduced to a new way of life by her liberal aunt.

Though she retains her faith through several horrendous events, Kambili learns to

question authority when necessary. Aunty Ifeoma's regime, which encourages

independent thinking and embraces defiance, affords Kambili and Jaja a space to breathe

and to grow that they cannot find at home. As the state proceeds in the direction of

discipline by terror, Kambili and Jaja begin to discover their own capabilities. For

Kambili, defiance is the first step toward freedom. Adichie reveal the ways in which her

narrator emerges as a critically aware intellectual with the ability to note intimate
 33

alliances between the domestic violence of the father and the sovereign violence of the

state, intertwined as these are in a nexus of colonial and neo-colonial realities. However,

it is precisely in the distinct mobilizations that lead to her protagonist overcoming the

deadening influence of such autocratic figures that Adichie charts. Taking as a starting

point her brother's act of defiance against their father, the fourteen-year-old first-person

narrator of Chimamanda Adichie's 2003 debut novel begins her story with the following

declaration: 

"Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to

communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke

the figurines on the etagere" 

(Purple Hibiscus- pg- 3)

Kambili thinks Jaja’s defiance is like the purple hibiscus in her Aunty Ifeoma’s

garden. They represent a new kind of freedom, unlike the chants of freedom shouted at

the Government Center. The purple hibiscus represents a freedom to do and to be. Jaja

speaks against the tyrannical authority at home, he speaks against his father who imposed

upon his family his own wishes.

Adichie herself can be called a vernacular intellectual. She voices against

discrimination and injustice like her chsracters. They are mouthpieces to speak out the

truth within her. Adichie recalls an incident at a party when she was twelve.

“The conversation at dinner was about traditional Igbo culture, about

the custom that allows only men to break the kola nut, and the kola nut is

a deeply symbolic part of Igbo cosmology. I argued that it would be better

if that honor were based on achievement rather than gender, and he looked at

me and said, dismissively, “You don’t know what you are talking about,
 34

you’re a small girl.”

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

We are all guilty of perpetuating stereotypes that create a single story, whether it’s

intentional or not. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie puts it best: “Show people as one thing

over and over again, and that’s what they become.” In this TED Talk, the Nigerian author

warns that we risk a very critical and very cultural misunderstanding when we forget that

everyone’s lives and identities are composed of many overlapping stories. “The single

story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but

that they are incomplete.” When we hear the same story over and over again, it becomes

the only story we ever believe. And this stands especially true for the story of Africa. Too

often do we hear this version—Africa, the poorest “country” in the world where only

rural landscapes exist and where people live in terror amongst wild animals. Too often do

we treat Africa as one narrative, one we have fostered over generations and generations,

becoming so institutionalized that even those who graduated from universities will

sometimes slip and refer to Africa as a country or their language as “African.” This is the

danger of a single story, and it brings to mind a quote by American writer Alvin Toffler:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those

who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” We must learn to unlearn these perpetuated

stereotypes in order to allow ourselves to see that there is more than this one narrative to

Africa—to anything, really. Adichie’s novels are inspired by Nigerian history, telling the

forgotten stories that generations of Westerners fail to repeat. However, she reminds us

that we must not only seek diverse perspectives, we must also tell our own stories, ones

that only we can tell about our own personal experiences. What she hopes to follow are

the first signs of crumbling of clichés and stereotypes, something that’s long overdue but
 35

never too late a process to begin. Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story” is one of the most

powerfully crafted speeches ever given, one where every single word counts.

"Every time I am home I am confronted with the usual sources of irritation

for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but also

by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government,

rather than because of it. I teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer,

and it is amazing to me how many people apply, how many people are eager to write, to

tell stories. Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been

used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower

and to humanize.Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can

also repair that broken dignity.”

(Danger of a Single Story)

This reason, the exposing of truth to power is the reason she gives for her decision

of choosing her career as a writer. For the same reason, Adichie can be classified as a

vernacular intellectual. She wrote about the wrong she sees in the society around her. Her

character Ugwu does the same in Half of a Yellow Sun. Ugwu’s pursuit as a writer on his

unconscious path to become a vernacular intellectual is explored in the next chapter.

 36

Chapter 3

Exposure of Truth in Half of A Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is undoubtedly a novel about

the Biafran War, but unlike many novels on the civil war in Nigeria, it focuses more on

the relationships between people surving the tragedy amidst the atrocities and politics of

war than on war itself. It explores the art of living, loving and dying in the midst of the

political upheaval and massacres leading up to the war and the war itself. Adichie, like

Chris Abani, is a part of a generation that has grown up in a highly globalised ,

transnational world. However, globalisation is not quite prevalent in Half of a Yellow

Sunspanning the period of Nigerian history from shortly after independence (1960)

through to the end of the Biafran War. Adichie writes mainly about the Biafran War and

the intellectuals from that period from a different perspective to first and second

generation Nigerian authors.

The novel takes place in Nigeria prior to and during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–

70). The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of five people’s

lives including twin daughters of an influential businessman, a professor, a British citizen,

and a houseboy. After Biafra's declaration of secession, the lives of the main characters

drastically changed and were torn apart by the brutality of the civil war and decisions in

their personal lives.

The book jumps between events that took place during the early and late 1960s,

when the war took place, and extends until the end of the war. In the early 1960s, the

main characters are introduced: Ugwu, a 13-year-old village boy who moves in with
 37

Odenigbo, to work as his houseboy. Odenigbo frequently entertains intellectuals to

discuss the political turmoil in Nigeria. Life changes for Ugwu when Odenigbo’s

girlfriend, Olanna, moves in with them. Ugwu forms a strong bond with both of them,

and is very loyal. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, a woman with a dry sense of humor,

tired by the pompous company she runs for her father. Her lover Richard is an

Englishman who has come to Nigeria to explore Igbo-Ukwu art.

Jumping four years ahead, trouble is brewing between the Hausa and the Igbo

people and hundreds of people die in massacres, including Olanna's beloved auntie and

uncle. A new republic, called Biafra, is created by the Igbo. As a result of the conflict,

Olanna, Odenigbo, their infant daughter, whom they refer to only as "Baby", and Ugwu

are forced to flee Nsukka, which is the university town and the major intellectual hub of

the new nation. They finally end up in the refugee town of Umuahia, where they suffer as

a result of food shortages and the constant air raids and paranoid atmosphere. There are

also allusions to a conflict between Olanna and Kainene, Richard and Kainene and

Olanna and Odenigbo.

When the novel jumps back to the early 1960s, we learn that Odenigbo slept with a

village girl, who then had his baby. Olanna is furious at his betrayal, and sleeps with

Richard in a moment of liberation. She goes back to Odenigbo and when they later learn

that Amala refused to keep her newborn daughter, Olanna decides that they would keep

her.

Back during the war Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby, and Ugwu were living with Kainene

and Richard where Kainene was running a refugee camp. The situation is hopeless as they

have no food or medicine. Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines, but does not

return, even after the end of the war a few weeks later. The book ends ambiguously, with

the reader not knowing if Kainene lives.

 38

Half of a Yellow Sun received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. The award is given

annually for the best original full-length novel written by a woman in English; Adichie's

prize amounted to £30,000. The novel was well received by critics and included in

the New York Times′s "100 Most Notable Books of the Year".

In a review for The Seattle Times, Mary Brennan called the book "a sweeping story

that provides both a harrowing history lesson and an engagingly human narrative". The

New York Times had a more mixed review of the book, noting that "at times Adichie’s

writing is too straightforward, the novel’s pace too slack" but also that "whenever she

touches on her favorite themes — loyalty and betrayal — her prose thrums with life." The

Washington Post states: “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie certainly lives up to the hype in her

second novel, Half a Yellow Sun. She wowed us with this transcendent tale about war,

loyalty, brutality, and love in modern Africa. While painting a searing portrait of the

tragedy that took place in Biafra during the 1960s, her story finds its true heart in the

intimacy of three ordinary lives buffeted by the winds of fate. Her tale is hauntingly

evocative and impossible to forget.” Rob Nixon's review addressed the historical side of

the novel: “Half of a Yellow Sun takes us inside ordinary lives laid waste by the all too

ordinary unraveling of nation states. When an acquaintance of Olanna’s turns up at a

refugee camp, she notices that – he was thinner and lankier than she remembered and

looked as though he would break in two if he sat down abruptly. – It's a measure of

Adichie’s mastery of small things – and of the mess the world is in – that we see that man

arrive, in country after country, again and again and again.” Aïssatou Sidimé from San

Antonio Express-News called Adichie's writing "alluring and revelatory, eloquent, prize-

winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is quickly proving herself to be

fearless in the tradition of the great African writers." Nigerian writer Chinua

Achebe commented: “We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a
 39

new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers," and said about Adichie: "She is

fearless, or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria's civil war."

The vernacular intellectual is particularly interesting in Half of a Yellow Sun,

especially the way that political and social issues are approached in this period of

Nigerian history. Since the novelis set in the early 1960s, right after independence, and

the conflict surrounding national and individual identity is palpable. Adichie contrasts the

Afropolitan academic, who are not always equipped to deal with the problems in their

own nation in spite of their western education, or because of it. On the other hand, she

provides us with a striking example of a vernacular intellectual who arises organically

and develops an Afrotransnational identity alongside his role as an intellectual. He is able

to access knowledge from both the western and traditional world and through his

experiences during the Biafran War he is compelled to write a book that could potentially

affect a change in society in Nigeria as well as the world. This book deals with the

injustice, violence and complicity of the world outside Nigeria who bear witness to the

unfolding violence, whether directly or indirectly in perpetuating such evils, and the novel

thus subtly links with the global.

Ugwu in Half of a Yellow Sun is an excellent example of the development of a

vernacular intellectual. He starts off as a houseboy for Odenigbo and Olanna at the age of

about thirteen and has a limited formal education. Upon his arrival to Nsukka at

Odenigbo’s home, he encounters modernity on a larger scale than he is used to and is

fascinated by the house, it’s furniture, the foreign appliances, the copious amounts of food

by village standards, and what he considers to be a waste of space particularly in the

garden which contains mainly inedible plants.Odenigbo is naturally no real help in aiding
 40

him to navigate this strange new world as he is too preoccupied withhis academic

dealings. Nevertheless, it marks the beginning of Ugwu’s epistemological revolution: as a

servant, then a pupil who becomes a teacher during the war, a child soldier and eventually

an authorial voice.

Odenigbo though has little concern for Ugwu’s encounters with modernity, he is

serious about securing Nigeria’s future with education. He thus sets Ugwu on a journey

towards acquiring such an education. Odenigbo tells Ugwu that,

“There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land:

the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read

books and learn both answers. I will give you books, excellent books.” Master stopped to

sip his tea. “They will teach you that a white man called Mungo

Park discovered River Niger. That is rubbish. Our people fished in the

Niger long before Mungo Park’s grandfather was born. But in your exam,

write that it was Mungo Park.”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg-270)

Odenigbo constantly talks with Ugwu about a variety of political and social

matters and gives him numerous books to read which he believes will provide Ugwu with

the answers formal schooling doesn’t teach him. He seems a bit oblivious to the fact

thatmore often than not Ugwu is completely lost even as he tries his best: Ugwu did not

understand most of the sentences in the books, but he made a show of reading them. Nor

did he entirely understand the conversations of Master and his friends but listened

anyway. He does so because he has a near religious respect for education. Despite his

rough start, Ugwu is nevertheless set off on a path towards an education that will lead to

his development as a vernacular intellectual.

 41

As he develops through his formal and informal education, Ugwu also learns how

to maintain good relationships that is essential to his role as a vernacular intellectual. He

is still caught up in many of the traditions and superstitions of his culture but he still

believesin the power that they could still potentially hold over Nigerians. He nurtures

friendships with both Harrison, Richard’s houseboy, and Jomowho works in the garden.

These two have an ongoing feud but Ugwu manages to stay friendswith both because,

“Ugwu preferred Jomo’s solemn ways and false stories, but Harrison, with

his insistent bad English, was mysteriously full of knowledge of things that

were foreign and different. Ugwu wanted to learn these things, so he nurtured

his friendship with both men; he had become their sponge, absorbing much

and giving away little.”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg-118)

Ugwu thus, does not exclude the type of knowledge he gets from Jomo, but

attempts to distinguish between the useful traditional information Jomo offers and the

purely superstitious. Similarly, Harrison teaches him about British culture, particularly

food. Ugwu then selectively combines a western education withmore traditional

knowledge, assuming a type of Afrotransnational identity which allows him in the end to

function as a vernacular intellectual.

Ugwu’s emotional intelligence is evident as he is the one who recognise the threat

that Odenigbo’s mother poses to Olanna and Odenigbo’s relationship, while Odenigbo

remains oblivious to it. Ugwu believes in the traditional powers that Odenigbo’s mother

could employ to drive a wedge between the two lovers. While Odenigbo ignores Ugwu’s

concerns and his mother’s suspiscious behaviour, Ugwu watches her every move.

Unfortunately Ugwu realises too late what she was planning, but at least he is not as
 42

oblivious and unaware as Odenigbo. He strikes a balance between the knowledge he has

acquired through his western education and his knowledge of traditional powers, and

employs these in understanding relationships.

When Ugwu is conscripted into the Biafran army we see more telling signs of his

developing cognitive capacity and how it enables him to develop as a vernacular

intellectual. While languishing in the military camp awaiting his assignment, Ugwu

searches for paper, on which he could write what he did from day to day. However,

instead of finding paper, he finds a novel hidden behind a blackboard in the old primary

school building they use as a base camp. The book was Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself, it served as a temporary refuge for

him from the reality of war. Douglass manages to escape slavery and become involved in

the abolitionist movement. There exists a parallel between Douglass’ and Ugwu’s life

which points out Ugwu’s own move towards becoming a vernacular intellectual just as

Douglass did. This transnational link in the Diaspora has a big impact on Ugwu.As a

soldier Ugwu also perpetrates many acts of war that would appear to be detrimental to the

development of a vernacular intellectual, yet one incident proves on the contrary to be

pivotal in setting Ugwu on course as a vernacular intellectual.While at a bar drinking with

other soldiers he gets frustrated, not of his becoming a soldier but of what he has become

as a person. Ugwu thinks, “He was not living his life; his life was living him”.

The power of literature in dealing with something like war is clear when Ugwu is

injured amd joins Olanna and Odenigbo again at Kainene’s refugee camp to recover.

Ugwu tellsRichard who brings him back from the hospital that although he was afraid

during the war, he found the Frederick Douglass book and explains how he was “so sad

and angry for the writer”.Richard thinks of this as an excellent anecdote and tells Ugwu

that he is going to mention this in the book he will write about the war. It would be called
 43

The World Was Silent When We Died. This is significant for Ugwu as he,“…..murmured

the title to himself:The World Was Silent When We Died.It haunted him, filled him with

shame.”

So, as part of his atonement, he helps at the refugee camp run by Kainene and

Olanna and in the evenings he wrote. He writes about everything from before the war

right through to the misery, as well as humour, in the refugee camp. He feels dissatisfied

with his writing and he,

“….realized that he would never be able to capture that child on

paper, never be able to describe well enough the fear that dulled

the eyes of mothers in the refugee camp when the bomber

planes charged out of the sky. He would never be able to depict

the very bleakness of bombing hungry people. But he tried, and

the more he wrote the less he dreamed.”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg- 498)

While his writing cannot fully describe exactly what he experiences or witnesses,

it enables him to process his experiences and come to terms with them. It is a process of

atonement and healing for him rather than an overt attempt to write something great as

Richard does, or to educate people like Odenigbo.

It is only much later that Ugwu decides to combine his writings into a book about

the Biafran war. When Richard reads a couple of his pages he encourages Ugwu, telling

him it is excellent. He informs Richard of his intention to write the book and call it

Narrative of the Life of a Country using the Frederick Douglass book as his inspiration.

Richard then admits to him that he is no longer writing his own book because, “[the] war

isn’t my story to tell, really” . Thus the eight sections that appear at intervals during the
 44

novel in which Adichie summarises the chapters in The Book: The World Was Silent

When We Died is not written by Richard as the reader is led to believe. Adichie seems to

purposefully mislead us only to reveal right at the end that it was actually taken from

Ugwu’s book.Ugwu writes his dedication in the end:For Master, my good man.

This ode to his Master, who continually referred to Ugwu as “My good man” in

true British form, honours the pivotal role that their relationship played and the exposure

it afforded Ugwu in becoming a vernacular intellectual. The title of the book is borrowed

from Richard as Brenda Cooper states that Ugwu “must atone for his crime, which he

does by inheriting the white character, Richard’s, role as the writer, who documents the

realities of the atrocities of the war.” The fact that Ugwu inherits the book’s title from

Richard is symbolic of the combination of his western and traditional education in writing

the book.

Ugwu’s book, The World Was Silent When We Died, could be read as ‘speaking

the truth to power’ in a number of ways. Ugwu had never intended to write a book or

article that would mean something in the world, but rather, he rises organically to take on

the role of a vernacular intellectual through his writing. As Ouma says Ugwu gains the

status, within the narrative hierarchy of the novel, of

an authorial voice, as a source of traumatic memory and history as well

as custodian of the processing of the same history.The book does more than this though as

it speaks the truth to power by questioning why the world did nothing, and therefore

acting as an accomplice, while thousands of Biafrans died. The world presumably had the

power to intervene but chose not to, even when they knew the truth. Instead world powers

such as Russia in fact participated in bombing Biafran civilians. In raising such questions,

Ugwu is more of a vernacular intellectual than either Odenigbo or Richard. It was

 45

actually Richard who had inspired him with the title. In fact, it was the title of Richard’s

book.

“ "The World Was Silent When We Died.  It haunted him, filled him

with shame.  It made him think about that girl in the bar, her pinched

face and the hate in her eyes as she lay on her back on the dirty floor."

Ugwu pondersthe name of the book Richard was goingto write.”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg- 496)

In the various chapters of Ugwu’s book he addresses certain factors leading to

aspects of the Biafran War. In the first chapter, he relates how Olanna sees a woman

carrying her child’s head in a calabash as she flees the massacres, as if unable to accept

reality. Adichie also tells us that Ugwu writes about other women from Germany and

Rwanda who had done similar things during the Jewish holocaust and Rwandan genocide

respectively. In this way, as in Said’s argument referred to earlier in this chapter, by

linking Olanna’s experience to other massacres and the problem of universal violence and

suffering it decries the fact that humankind does not seem to have learned from its

mistakes.

In the second chapter Ugwu outlines the ideologies, beliefs and practices that led

to the birth of the nation of Nigeria in 1914. Ultimately the British fought the French for

control over the palm-oil trade route and used certain cultural aspects of the respective

Yoruba, Igbo and Fulani people against them to implement an indirect rule policy while

filling the British coffers with profits made by exploiting the land and its people. As if

Nigeria were a toy, the Governor-General allowed his wife to pick the name that would

join the north and south into a united nation. By implication, Ugwu also thus challenges
 46

the underlying authoritative ‘truth’ that white people are superior to black and that this

justifies all the above acts.

The third chapter further explains that at independence Britain made sure that the

north and south remained united, even rigging the elections in favour of the North and

giving them power at the exclusion of the South. Their motivation for keeping the North

and South united was that Nigeria was “their prized creation, their large market, their

thorn in France’s eye”. Again we get the impression that Nigeria is nothing but a tool

used to gain a victory over France with no thought as to the implications for the nation

under dispute. Thus, the divisions that had been created along ethnic lines by the British

to ensure control during colonialism were now exacerbated and, “Independence in 1960,

Nigeria was a collection of fragments held in a fragile clasp”. Ugwu’s recounting of these

events implicates the sources of many of the political and social problems that would later

lead to a civil war.

In chapter five Ugwu writes about an important aspect of the war: starvation. In

this chapter he recounts how, “starvation broke Biafra and brought Biafra fame and made

Biafra last as long as it did”. This is because reports of the starvation of Biafrans lead

some people to act in so far as they protested; motivated certain African nations to finally

recognise Biafra; and ironically “made parents all over the world tell their children to eat

up” . It also led to the aid organisations sneaking food into the country as a food corridor

could not be agreed upon and, starvation “aided the careers of photographers” . Although

there were parties that were moved by the news and pictures of starvation in Biafra,

people also used it to their advantage, such as Richard Nixon in his presidential campaign

and the media trying to sell more newspapers.

 47

Similarly, in chapter six, Ugwu points out how the world remained silent largely

out of a fear of aligning themselves with the wrong entity and thus risking the loss of their

particular segment of power on the world stage. Adichie states that the tone of silence was

set by Britain, the US and Canada following suit. This pronounced silence allowed the

Soviet Union the opportunity to finally interfere in Africa by supporting Nigeria. Perhaps

the most pronounced example Adichie provides in this section is the African nations that

also remained silent for fear that if they supported Biafra, other African countries would

experience similar secession and potential conflict. The silence of the world was thus as

much about ignorance as it was about self-preservation.

The epilogue in chapter seven is a very moving poem. It is “modelled after one of

Okeoma’s poems” , which poignantly asks the reader if they were silent as innocent

children suffered the debilitating effects of malnutrition.

The poem maintains a thematic thread throughout the Half of a Yellow Sun. Few

lines from the poem read:

“Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea

And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone:

Naked children laughing, as if the man

Would not take photos and then leave, alone”

(Half of a Yellow Sun- pg- 470)

The poem questions how people living their comfortable lives in other parts of the

world could look at a picture of such children, experience momentary compassion and

then just carry on with their lives. It reflects on how these children laughed, played and

lived as normal a life as possible even with the shadow of death hanging over them,
 48

knowing that the journalists came to take photos of them but that nothing would change.

The world would just remain silent.

This is an example of Mark Sanders’s use of the term complicity. He explains

that Karl Jaspers’s concept of “metaphysical guilt” proposes that all human beings are

connected to one another and therefore people are responsible for crimes committed

against others by virtue of this inherent connection. Thus, when people across the world

are aware of injustices and violence committed against others, whether they are of the

same community or one completely removed, they are ‘co-responsible’ for those

injustices and violence. So remaining silent about these acts renders them complicit in

perpetrating violence and injustice against other members of the human race.

Essentially Ugwu’s Afrotransnational identity allowed him to combine his formal

and informal education in a manner that leads him to write this book. He was able to

combine his formal and informal education in a balanced way. He selects the means of

expression from his formal education, but draws inspiration from his personal experience

and from those around him. He thus begins to come to terms with his personal

experiences during the war, and to raise important questions that pertain to the role that

the world played, or failed to play, in the suffering of not only Nigerians, but all

humankind.
 49

Conclusion

This thesis investigates the effects of globalisation on identity formation and how

this specifically impacts on the ability of the intellectual to function in Nigerian society as

presented in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

  The identities of different people correlate with the extent to which intellectuals

are able to address the right audience with a message relevant to their context and

concerns and delivering this message effectively so as to affect a positive change in

society as required by Said. The degree to which intellectuals fulfil these three

requirements determines whether they are labelled academics or vernacular intellectuals.

While the former consists of those intellectuals who exhibit an Afropolitan identity which

often causes them to use predominantly western concepts and perspectives to define and

explain African problems. They also seldom go beyond discussing and theorising the

causes and effects of problems in Africa. Even when they are able to come up with

solutions, they rarely translate this into practical intellectual activity with others.

On the other hand, vernacular intellectuals exhibit Afrotransnational identities.

Afrotransnational refers to the unique African expression of transnationalism that

Africans, and specifically Nigerians in this case, develop as they consume and transform

global products and ideas within the local. This enable intellectuals to draw from both

western and African knowledge, perspectives and practices and combine them in a

manner that allows them to work towards finding solutions for African problems.

Vernacular intellectuals are also able to meaningfully engage a wider audience in

a manner that mobilises them to take action that subverts and resists oppression. The
 50

Nigerian context with its military powered dictators complicates the function of the

intellectual as they disallow active participation by members of society in the public

sphere. Intellectuals, and indeed all member of society, are consequently forced to either

remain silent in the face of injustice and oppression, making them complicit; taking

revolutionary action in speaking the truth to power, which puts their lives at risk; or

finding alternative ways of resisting oppression.

 Half of a Yellow Sun provides us with many different perspectives on how people

from different strata in society develop different types of identities in this complex,

postcolonial Nigeria and how this relates to their ability to function as intellectuals. The

elites, expatriates, journalists, scholars and even non-academic people provide readers

with an array of transnational, Afropolitan and Afrotransnational identities. While the

majority of elites conform to a type of empty Afropolitan identity, the British expatriates

resist any transnational influence. The scholars on the other hand also adopt Afropolitan

identities as a result of their British education, which removes them from society outside

their academic circles. They are largely unable to connect to the non-academic Nigerian

citizenry on a non-academic level. The academics thus have a very limited sphere of

influence in Nigerian politics before the war and have little or no influence during the

war.

I would argue that after the war it is perhaps vernacular intellectuals like Ugwu,

writing novels such as The World Was Silent When We Died, who will have the ability to

help the country come to terms with what has happened through their writings. The

wounds left on Nigeria as a nation by the Biafran War will not be easy to heal.Adichie

states in her interview with Wali Adebanwi:

“I do wish that literature can be strong enough to help. But help inwhat
 51

way? If literature can affect the way one person thinks, thenperhaps

it has helped. [. . .] I have”.

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

This may indicate why she portrays Ugwu as writing literature about the war. It is

art such as Ugwu’s which is most likely to touch people and just as the writing process

allowed him to deal with their violent past, reading his novel could help other people do

the same. He is better equipped to do so than either Odenigbo the Afropolitan or Richard

and his brand of transnationalism. It is Ugwu with his unique blend of traditional Igbo

culture and formal western education who develops an Afrotransnational identity and

who is the most effective vernacular intellectual. As Hawley points out,

“Richard, plays a highly symbolic role for Adichie: as white chronicler of

the war, he gradually finds himself paralyzed for words; in his place, Ugwu

rises up as the historian far more suited to the task.”

(Hawley)

Ugwu is far more able to tell the story of the Biafran War than Richard would ever

have been. The summarised chapters from Ugwu’s book all tell a part of the Biafran

story, and even if people remained silent during the war, certain questions have to be

asked. It may be too late to change what happened in Nigeria, but perhaps Adichie is

trying to not only pay homage to her heritage as a Biafran, but also arguing that these

things should never happen again, to anyone anywhere in the world.

Through her character Ugwu, the vernacular intellectual, and the chapters of the

book that she sums up rather than quotes as he would have written them himself, Adichie

merges her own voice with Ugwu’s and thus takes on the role of writer-intellectual. As a
 52

writerintellectual, Adichie challenges the reader to investigate their own silence when

injustices were committed during the Biafran War and other conflicts around the world.
 53

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun. Harper Perennial, 2014

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Random House, 1995

Farred, Grant. What's My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals. University of

Minnesota Press, 2003

Jarvie, Grant. Sport, Culture and Society: An Introduction, second edition. Routledge,

2012

Massad, Joseph. "The Intellectual Life of Edward Said" Journal of Palestine Studies, 2004

Poyner, Jane. J.M.Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual. Ohio University Press,

2006

Rose, Jonathan. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. Yale University

Press, 2010

Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. Vintage,

1996

Shandler, Jeffrey. Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History. Rutgers University Press,

2015

Lovesey, Oliver.The Postcolonial Intellectual. Routledge, 2015