Socio-cultural Dynamics of Displacement in Adichie’s Novels

Abstract

Displacement is an all-embracing experience that has attracted global interest. Post-colonial countries in Africa and beyond are grappling with this experience. Literary discourse is alive to the socio-cultural dimensions that it exhibits and a number of literary writers have invested their artistic energies in exploring these trajectories. This study focuses on Adichie’s novels as literary platforms upon which the socio-cultural trajectories have been ventilated upon. Using a multi-dimensional construct of critical hybridity as a theoretical prism, the experiences of specific characters have been analysed to depict the dynamics of displacement from a fictional point of view. This study concludes that displacement is a multi-layered phenomenon, arising from several factors and Adichie explores a number of socio-cultural trajectories in her two novels, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. In both novels, the main characters, Kambili and Olanna assume dislocated states of existence and detached consciousness which reflects the indeterminate unfolding of events shaped around their senseless cognitive meandering within the novel.