HOMELAND HOSTLAND: THE IMPACT OF DIASPORA EXPERIENCE ON NIGERIAN CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Abstract

The Diaspora phenomenon has assumed a new significance in Nigerian literature. This paper seeks to  interrogate the role of female Nigerian writers in this global phenomenon, including the factors that spur diasporisation and the literatures that diasporisation has spawned. With much higher global visibility, the literature of this relatively small diaspora community receives a disproportionately greater critical attention than its home-based counterpart, thus giving the world what is, in effect, a ‘minority report’ on Nigerian literature. We  aim to show that the output of  Nigerian writers in the Diaspora shows a thematic and aesthetic departure from  that emanating from the homeland. The study finds a slant towards fantasy genre fiction in the works of  US-based writers Nnedi Okorafor and Tomi Adeyemi on the one hand, and an extremist form of feminism in those of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinelo Okparanta, particularly, Chinelo Okparanta whose Under the Udala Tree, main focus of this paper, espouses the disavowal of marriage and an unbridled embrace of homosexuality. Reviewing earlier studies on diasporisation by Sule Egya and others, and drawing from sociological and feminist theories, this paper shows that the aesthetics of diaspora Nigerian literature is influenced by the respective realities of the ‘hostland’ and the ‘homeland’. The importance of this paper includes its evaluation of the extent to which this development is injurious or salutary to Nigerian literature of today and the future.