Representation, Gender and The Politics of Marginalisation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count

Sexual violence inflicted on migrants and women of colour has always been rendered insignificant by their host communities, perpetuating the inequalities of gender, race, class, social mobility, citizenship status and nationality. The media, anti-sexual violence activism and anti-rape law are not built to address the sexual violence against African migrant women, thereby rendering these victims subjects of media and societal scrutiny, mockery and objects of caricature. Reading Chimamanda Adichie’s Dream Count, this study applies the implicit bias theory as the primary framework to examine the Western media’s framing and mainstream perceptions of sexual assault against women of colour, without institutional power. It analyses the challenges of narrating sexual violence by the victims, and the unconscious biases against victims, which lead to victim-blaming tendencies. Intersectionality is applied as the complementary framework to clarify how immigration, gender, class and race interact in the novel’s depiction of gender-based violence. Through qualitative and textual analysis of Kadiatou’s narrative, inspired by the Nafissatou Daillo case, the paper shows that implicit biases in Western media strengthen intersectional oppression and expose the limits of Western anti-rape law in sexual violence involving migrant African women and men-in-power using Adichie’s Dream Count.