8 Literary Separatism: Ethnic Balkanization in Nigeria-Biafra War Narratives

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Notes on Contributors viii
4. List of Abbreviations xv
5. Timeline of Nigeria’s Political History, 1900–1970 xvi
6. Map of Biafra 30 May 1967 – 1 May 1969 xx
7. 1 Scholarly Trends, Issues, and Themes: Introduction 1
8. Part I ON THE HISTORY OF THE NIGERIA-BIAFRA WAR
9. 2 Background to the Nigerian Civil War 17
10. 3 Connecting Theory with Reality: Understanding the Causes of the Nigeria-Biafra War 40
11. 4 The Ahiara Declaration and the Fate of Biafra in a Postcolonial/Bi-Polar World Order 62
12. 5 The Ahiara Declaration Polemics and Politics 81
13. Part II CRITICAL DEBATES ON THE NIGERIAN CRISIS
14. 6 Beyond the Blame Game: Theorizing the Nigeria-Biafra War 111
15. 7 Confronting the Challenges of Nationhood in Pre-Biafran Texts: Newspaper Narratives on the Eve of War* 130
16. 8 Literary Separatism: Ethnic Balkanization in Nigeria-Biafra War Narratives 166
17. 9 Local Writers and Commitments to Ethnic Sentiments 194
18. Part III THE WAR IN FICTION, MEMOIR, AND IMAGINATION
19. 10 Memoirs and the Question of Objectivity: Revisiting Alexander Madiebo’s The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War and Robert Collis’s Nigeria in Conflict 209
20. 11 ‘War is War’ Recreating the Dreams and Nightmares of the Nigeria-Biafra War through the Eyes of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy 230
21. 12 First, There Was a Country: Then There Wasn’t: Reflections on Achebe’s There Was a Country 245
22. 13 Ethnic Minorities and the Biafran National Imaginary in Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun 265
23. 14 Biafra in the Irish Imagination: War and Famine in Banville’s An End to Flight and Forristal’s Black Man’s Country 284
24. 15 Magical Realism or Science Fiction: The Nigerian Civil War and Ali Mazrui’s The Trial of Christopher Okigbo 314
25. 16 Biafra, an Impractical Mission? Revisiting S.O. Mezu’s Behind the Rising Sun and I.N.C. Aniebo’s The Anonymity of Sacrifice 328
26. 17 Neo-Colonialism, Biafra, and the Causes of War as Imagined in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra 361
27. 18 No, This is Not Redemption: The Biafra War Legacy in Chris Abani’s GraceLand 380
28. Part IV LOCATING GENDER IN NIGERIA-BIAFRA WAR LITERATURE
29. 19 Gender and the Construction of the Nigeria-Biafra War Scholarship 403
30. 20 What is the Country? Reimagining National Space in Women’s Writing on the Biafran War 423
31. 21 Female Participation in War and the Implication of Nationalism: The Postcolonial Disconnection in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra 454
32. Select Bibliography 477
33. Index 486