Betwixt and Between: Negotiating Parental Abandonment and Family Life in Sade Adeniran's Imagine This
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Date
2018
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University of Dar es Salaam, College of Humanities
Abstract
Using African feminist and post-colonial theories, this paper
examines the representation of the institution of family in Sade
Adeniran’s Imagine This, in order to explore the character’s
creation of a third space – one that is ambivalent and
traumatic – in her context of divorce and family abandonment.
As depicted in the narrative, a major reason behind such
family tragedies is an overlap between patriarchy and the postcolonial
state. Thus, through the protagonist’s troubled
identity and traumatic experience due to her family’s
dynamics, the narrative questions the role of a child in
reconnecting fragmented family bonds. This heroine’s
traumatised hatred of her culture and of the institution of
motherhood raises questions about the future of African
feminism. If this ideology marginalises culture and renders
motherhood as an institution no longer centrally important to
contemporary African women, then it requires critical
engagement. I explore how the literary genre inspired by
African feminism enters established socio-cultural spaces
critically and interrogates family dynamics ruthlessly. And I
query whether it offers any solutions to the dilemmas of women
that are uncovered and illuminated thereby. I will argue that
the child protagonist in this narrative is presented not merely
as a victim of circumstance – existing as she does betwixt and
between family identities that are simultaneously familiar and
strange – she is also depicted as attempting valiantly to
reconnect the fragmented family bonds.
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Keywords
African feminism, Sade Adeniran, Betwixt and between, Divorce, Family