Volume 23, Issue 1 (September 2023)

Women’s mobility and access to space remain deeply constrained by patriarchal structures that regulate movement, identity and self-expression. In literary representations of women’s lives, these spatial restrictions often sustain gendered power relations and limit female autonomy. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space and an African feminist framework, this qualitative study examines how spatial mobility and female agency intersect in Aiwanose Odafen’s Tomorrow I Become a Woman. The study argues that the text foregrounds gendered spaces as mechanisms for normalising patriarchal authority and constraining women’s movement. Through a textual analysis, the study reveals that gendered spaces, particularly domestic, marital, religious and legal spaces, regulate women’s movement, silence aspirations and normalise female subordination. At the same time, spatial shifts enable moments of negotiation, resistance, and autonomy. By foregrounding the tension between spatial constraints and spatial possibility, the study conceptualises female agency as a contested and processual quest, contributing to feminist spatial criticism and advancing critical conversation on the intersection of space, power and gender in contemporary literary discourse.

Gender coloniality in African literature is characterized by feminist identity, which is twisted into uncertainties and continued abuse. Just as women are unduly subjected to masculinist and socio-economic and political dominance, colonial intrusion situates them more at the margin than indigenous culture does. Thus, gender coloniality is a continued domination of women in postcolonial Africa. From postcolonial feminist theory, this paper explores the coloniality of women in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero. Although studies of the novel focus on sexuality and gender commodification, this paper employs Gyatri Spivak's theory of the subaltern to examine the woman as a marginalized individual. And one who launches a fierce attack as a way to speak against patriarchal tradition that has persistently debased her female identity. The paper takes an expository look at the representation of patriarchy, the intersection of class, gender and colonial impact. The paper, however, interrogates the patriarchal conceptualization of femininity that invariably signifies weakness, dependency, and continued denial.

This study examines trauma and identity crises in Chika Unigwe’s The Middle Daughter. The objectives of this study are to explore how psychological trauma is represented in the text, to analyse the identity crisis experienced by the protagonist, and to investigate the coping mechanisms and processes through which Nani reconstructs her sense of self. Psychoanalytic theory, drawing on Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva, provides the study's theoretical framework. Trauma theory further guides the analysis of how traumatic experiences disrupt memory, selfhood, and narrative coherence. The study shows that The Middle Daughter portrays trauma as both personal and systemic, reflecting the psychological and cultural dimensions of patriarchal and religious oppression. The research finds that Unigwe’s novel not only depicts suffering but also emphasises resilience, post-traumatic growth, and the reconstruction of selfhood within restrictive societal frameworks. By connecting personal trauma to broader social and cultural contexts, the study contributes to African feminist literary criticism and highlights storytelling as a tool for healing and empowerment.

This study examines eco-social oppression and the marginalised child in Amma Darko’s Faceless and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory. It addresses the interconnected effects of poverty, environmental degradation, social injustice, war, child marginalisation and trauma in the two novels. Drawing on Caruth’s concepts of belatedness, repetition, fragmentation, unspeakability and witnessing, the study employs close textual and comparative analysis. It argues that Faceless portrays urban poverty, environmental degradation, gender inequality and institutional neglect as conditions that expose Fofo and Baby T to homelessness, exploitation, violence and psychological trauma. In Beasts of No Nation, war, displacement, social collapse and forced militarisation disrupt Agu’s childhood and produce profound psychological fragmentation. Both novels employ repetition, silence, fragmented narration and disrupted temporality to represent traumatic experience and its social causes. The study demonstrates that the marginalised child constitutes an important site for understanding the relationship between environmental and social failure. By integrating environmental injustice, child marginalisation and trauma, the study contributes to African literary scholarship by showing how the suffering of children reveals the interconnected consequences of ecological degradation, social inequality, violence and institutional failure.

This paper critically examines the negotiation of tradition, gender, migration, and female identity in Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen (1974), with particular attention to how transnational movement reshapes women’s encounters with cultural expectations and patriarchal power. Drawing on Transnational Feminist Theory and employing qualitative textual analysis and interpretive close reading, the study examines Adah’s experiences in Nigeria and Britain as a process of cultural negotiation rather than a simple transition from tradition to modernity. It argues that migration does not necessarily liberate women from patriarchal structures; rather, it relocates and reshapes gendered inequalities within new social, cultural, racial, and economic contexts. The analysis is organised around three interconnected dimensions: the formation of Adah’s agency and identity; education and employment as resources for self-determination; and marriage, motherhood, and family as institutions through which gendered authority is reproduced and contested. Close reading of episodes concerning Adah’s childhood, education, migration, racial exclusion, marriage, employment, and writing shows how Emecheta represents agency as gradual, situated, and negotiated. The paper demonstrates that Adah’s identity develops through the interaction of cultural inheritance, migration, race, class, family responsibility, and personal aspiration. Emecheta’s representation therefore remains significant for understanding African women’s transnational experiences and the complex relationship between mobility, cultural belonging, and autonomy.

Esotericism names a hidden, inward order of knowledge and authority that is closed to the uninitiated. From the ancient mystery cults to contemporary prose, writers have drawn on secret knowledge, occult practice and unseen forces to think about power, consciousness and social organisation. This article compares three Nigerian narratives: Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s Zahrah the Windseeker and Meki Nzewi’s And the Dead Sing… Justice. Using a qualitative, comparative method that combines structuralist narratology with archetypal myth-criticism, it examines how the three writers use mythopoeia, the deliberate making of myth, to shape their prose and to work through the related questions of power and ritual. The Famished Road has drawn a large body of criticism on its magical realism and its indigenous belief systems, but Zahrah the Windseeker and And the Dead Sing… Justice have received little structural or mythic attention, and the three have not been read together before. The article shows that power acts on characters both as an enabling gift and as an invasive, possessing force, and that ritual works as an archetype that keeps cosmic and socio-political order in place. Nigerian mythopoeic fiction, it argues, turns traditional cosmology into literary form.

This study examines impoliteness strategies in the X (formerly Twitter) posts of political party supporters during the 2023 Nigerian presidential campaigns and accounts for the contextual factors underlying impoliteness. It explores how impoliteness functions in political discourse and party-related communication on social media. The study adopts Culpeper’s (1996) five impoliteness strategies to qualitatively analyse 9 purposively selected posts on X attributed to supporters of the three major political parties during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria: All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Labour Party (LP). The findings indicate that impoliteness was used to discredit political opponents and support the image of the preferred parties and candidates. The posts identify contextual factors such as power struggle, political affiliation, ethnicity, and cultural sensitivity.