1. Purple Hibiscus (2016) Lecture 1 Chimamanda Adichie

2. Lecture will cover the political, social and cultural ideas that shape this rather complex society in the period of the novel’s action. Of course, the political, social and cultural cannot be separated in any straight-forward sense.

3. Nigeria – gained independence in 1960 One country post-colonisation, but still very tribal in orientation. Three largest ethnic groups – Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa. If you look at the material on the net, the claim is for 250 ethnic groupings. Irate Nigerians have posted responses to this claim, arguing that there is a distinction to be made between dialects and ethic groups.

4. Yinka Shonibare MBE (1962 – ) Instillation – ‘The Scramble for Africa ’ (1881-1914) A ‘British-Nigerian’ artist whose work explores colonial and postcolonial identities, as well as issues of race and class. Nigeria formally became part of the British Empire in 1901, after many wars to repel the British invader. Dutch wax print, introduced to Africa by Europeans The partitioning of Africa was how the Europeans avoided warring amongst themselves over Africa. Berlin conference of 1884.

5. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

6. ‘Jaja of Opobo? The stubborn king?” Obiora asked. ‘Defiant,’ Aunt Ifeoma said. ‘He was a defiant king.’... ‘He was king of the Opobo people.’ Aunty Ifeoma said, ‘and when the British came, he refused to let them control all the trade. He did not sell his soul for a bit of gunpowder like the other kings did, so the British exiled him to the West Indies. He never returned to Opobo.’ (p. 144)

7. Biafra Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

8. Coups [Papa] looked sad; his rectangular lips seemed to sag. Coups begat coups, he said, telling us about the bloody coups of the sixties, which ended up in civil war just after he left Nigeria to study in England. A coup always began a vicious cycle. Military men would always overthrow one another, because they could, because they were all power drunk. (p. 24)

9. Structure Narrative triptych Palm Sunday comes before the second panel, which is Before Palm Sunday After Palm Sunday Final Epilogue-like section – ‘A Difference Silence: The Present’

10. Bildungsroman – novel of formation in which the protagonist grows from child/adolescent to adult. Bildungsroman narratives are often referred to as ‘coming of age’ narratives.

11. ‘ Kpa,’ she said. ‘I will not replace them.’ Maybe Mama had realized that she would not need the figurines anymore; that when Papa threw the missal at Jaja, it was not just the figurines that came tumbling down, it was everything, I was only now realizing it, only just letting myself think it. I lay in bed after Mama left and let my mind rake through the past, through the years when Jaja and Mama and I spoke more with our sprits than our lips. Until Nsukka. Nsukka started it all; Aunty Ifeoma’s little garden next to the verandah of her flat in Nsukka began to lift the silence... A freedom to be, to do. But my memories did not start at Nsukka. They started before, when all the hibiscuses in our front yard were a startling red. (pp. 15-16)

12. ‘I have nightmares about the other kind, the silence of when Papa was alive. In my nightmares, it mixes with shame and grief and so many other things that I cannot name, and forms blue tongues of fire that rest above my head, like Pentecost, until I wake up screaming and sweating. I have not told Jaja that I offer Masses for Papa every Sunday, that I want to see him in my dreams, that I want it so much I sometimes make my own dreams, when I an neither asleep nor awake. I see Papa, he reaches out to hug me. I reach out, too, but our bodies never touch before something jerks me up and I realize that I cannot control even the dreams that I have made. There is so much that is still silent Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked.’ (pp. 305-6)

13. Had Jaja forgotten that we never told, that there was much that we never told?

14. Janet Malcolm on autobiographical writing ‘Memory is not a journalist’s tool. Memory glimmers and hints. Memory does not narrate or render character.’ The first person narrative must invent herself or himself. She goes to ‘the older narrator looks back at his/her younger self with tenderness and pity, empathising with its sorrows and allowing for its sins.’

15. The status of ‘native’ is a neurosis introduced and maintained by the colonist in the colonized with their consent. [Sartre, ‘Preface’, to Frantz Fanon,The Wretched of the Earth]

16. We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. (p. 23) Papa spent some time describing hell, as if God did not know that the flames were eternal and raging and fierce... (p. 61) I did not know tongues could be Christian too. (p. 69) ‘Watching them [Amada and Papa-Nnukwu), I felt a longing for something I knew I would never have’ (p. 165)

17. Still, Jaja knew what I ate for lunch every day. We had a menu on the kitchen wall that Mama changed twice a month. But he always asked me, anyway. We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. ‘I have three assignments to do,’ Jaja said, turning to leave. ‘Mama is pregnant,’ I said. Jaja came back and sat down at the edge of my bed. ‘She told you?’ ‘Yes. She’s due in October.’ (p. 23)

18. I finished lunch first. ‘Thank you, Lord, thank you, Papa. Thank you, Mama.’ I folded my arms and waited until everybody was done so we could pray. I did not look at anybody’s face. I focused instead on the picture of Grandfather than hung on the opposite wall. When Papa started the prayer,, his voice quavered more than usual. He prayed for the food first, then he asked God to forgive those who had tried to thwart His will, who had put selfish desires first and had not wanted to visit His servant Mass. Mama’s ‘Amen!’ resounded throughout the room. (p. 32)

19. ‘Kambili, you are precious.’ His voice quavered now, like someone speaking at a funeral, choked with emotion. ‘You should strive for perfection. You should not see sin and walk right into it.’ He lowered the kettle into the tub tilted it toward my feet. He poured the hot water on my feet, slowly, as if he were conducting an experiment and wanted to see what would happen... I saw the moist steam before I saw the water. I watched the water leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was so pure, so scalding I felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed. (p. 194)

20. We had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English. Papa’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma, said once that Papa was too much of a colonial product. She had said this about Papa in a mild, forgiving way, as if it were not Papa’s fault, as one would talk about a person who was shouting gibberish from a sever case of malaria. [13]

21. ... Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as a freedom song. As laughter. (p. 299

22. ‘Hegel maintains that the mast and slave are initially, locked in a compulsive struggle-unto-death. This goes on until the weak-willed slave, preferring life to liberty, accepts his subjection to the victorious master. When these two antagonists finally face each other after battle, only the master is recognisable. The slave, on the other hand, is now a dependent ‘thing’ whose existence is shaped by, and as, the conquering Other.’ Postcolonial Theory, Leela Gandhi