NARRATING MIGRANCY IN SELECTED SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN MIGRANT NOVELS

Abstract

Migration, a movement of individuals away from their homelands, is a motif in sub-Saharan African migrant novels. Existing studies on African migrant novels emerging since the 1980s have focused on culture contact and identity crisis, sex trafficking and transnationalism, with little attention to migrants’ survival. This study was, therefore, designed to examine migrants’ living conditions in the selected novels, with a view to determining their survival strategies, as well as the fictional elements deployed. Gayatri Spivak’s model of subalternity, and Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis were adopted as framework, while the interpretive design was used. Seven sub-Saharan African novels were purposively selected for their engagement with migrant issues. They were Dinaw Mengestu’s Children of the Revolution and Inongo-vi-Makomè’s Natives (East/Central Africa), NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (Southern Africa), Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale (West Africa). The novels were subjected to literary analysis. Prostitution, menial jobs, marriages, fraud, betrayal, affectation, renaming, denaming, and bonding are the survival strategies deployed. Akobi and Mara in Beyond the Horizon; Sisi, Joyce, Efe and Ama in On Black Sisters’ Street; and Gerard Essomba in Natives migrate to Europe in pursuit of their economic survival. Akobi lures his wife into prostitution. Sisi, Joyce, Efe and Ama in On Black Sisters’ Street engage in commercial sex, while Gerald Essomba in Natives is a gigolo. Darling and Aunt Fostalina in We Need New Names, and Obi in A Squatter’s Tale do menial jobs. In A Squatter’s Tale, a twenty-year-old boy marries a fifty-year-old woman. Kristal, in We Need New Names, and Hook and Uncle Happiness, in A Squatter’s Tale, engage in advanced fee fraud. Akobi betrays Mara, while Kay’s boyfriend betrays her into prostitution in Beyond the Horizon. Roser and Gerard Essomba betray Montse by eloping in Natives. While Polycarp and Oga Dele betray Alek, Sisi betrays Oga Dele in On Black Sisters’ Street. In We Need New Names, Darling adopts an American accent, as she and fellow migrants rename themselves and dename their children at birth. In Beyond the Horizon, Akobi renames himself Cobby; in On Black Sisters’ Street, Chisom becomes Sisi, Alek becomes Joyce; and Gerard Essomba in Natives becomes Bambara Keita. Many of the migrant characters also use meetings as bonding for emotional and psychological survival. Stephanos, Ken, and Joe in Children of the Revolution, and the unnamed narrator and his friends in Harare North, meet regularly to review their lives. In Children of the Revolution, Stephanos is advised to bond with a white lady, and he also sleeps with prostitutes as a means of bonding. Through verbal and dramatic ironies, and characterisation, migrants’ motives are revealed. Situational irony underlines the nostalgia that characterises the migrants’ lives. Flashback reveals migrants introspection, and point of view focalises them. Sub-Saharan African novels deploy fictional elements of flashback, point of view, characterisation, and irony to reflect migrants’ survival strategies.