A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with ingenious craftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with extravagant and versatile narrative innovations.

Through her writings, she has made herself relevant to people of all ages - across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her imaginative creativity as they expand and define her mission as a writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay, giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in literary theory.

Her contributions to African, Diasporic and World literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of multicultural existence and complex human identities.

Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Ernest N. Emenyonu
Narrating the Past: Orality, History & the Production of Knowledge in the Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Louisa Uchum Egbunike
Deconstructing Binary Oppositions of Gender in Purple Hibiscus: A Review of Religious/Traditional Superiority & Silence - Janet N. Ndula
Adichie & the West African Voice: A Focus on Women & Power in Purple Hibiscus - Jane Duran
Reconstructing Motherhood: A Mutative Reality in Purple Hibiscus - Iniobong I. Uko
Ritualized Abuse in Purple Hibiscus - Edgar Fred Nabutanyi
Dining Room & Kitchen: Food-Related Spaces & their Interfaces with the Female Body in Purple Hibiscus - Jessica C. Hume
The Paradox of Vulnerability: The Child Voice in Purple Hibiscus - Oluwole Coker
"Fragile Negotiations": Olanna's Melancholia in Half of a Yellow Sun - Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo
The Biafran War & the Evolution of Domestic Space in Half of a Yellow Sun - Janice Spleth
Corruption in Post-Independence Politics: Half of a Yellow Sun as a Reflection of A Man of the People - Chikwendu PK Anyanwu
Contrasting Gender Roles in Male-Crafted Fiction with Half of a Yellow Sun - Carol Ijeoma Njoku
"A Kind of Paradise": Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Claim to Agency, Responsibility & Writing - Silvana Carotenuto
Dislocation, Cultural Memory & Transcultural Identity in Select Short Stories from The Thing Around Your Neck - Maitrayee Misra and Manish Shrivastava
"Reverse Appropriations" & Transplantation in Americanah - Gichingiri Ndigirigi
Revisiting Double Consciousness & Relocating the Self in Americanah - Rose A. Sackeyfio
Americanah: A Migrant Bildungsroman - Mary Jane Androne
"Hairitage" Matters: Transitioning & the Third Wave Hair Movement in "Hair", "Imitation" & Americanah - Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez
Appendix: The Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie