Though the Nigerian-Biafran War has been the subject of numerous literary and other artistic representations in the four decades since its conclusion, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2006 novel Half of a Yellow Sun has recently received tremendous international attention for its treatment of the 1967-1970 conflict. Contrary to the assertions of many critics, the novel’s complex representation of the war functions as much more than a setting for a series of family dramas at the foreground. Providing a counterargument to such readings, which emphasize the personal over the political in Half of a Yellow Sun, this paper will propose and trace a political allegory legible within the characters’ personal relationships and historical circumstances. Specifically, I will argue that the relationship between two protagonists, the twins Olanna and Kainene, aligns with the relationship between (Northern) Nigeria and the Eastern Nigeria, known as Biafra between 1967 and 1970, during its attempt to secede. In the way that Kainene grows emotionally distant from Olanna, eventually stops speaking to her, and suddenly disappears, so Eastern Nigeria increasingly clashed with Northern Nigeria during the early 1960s, seceded as the Republic of Biafra in 1967, and eventually “disappeared” at the end of the war in 1970, as it was absorbed back into Nigeria. Rather than indicating a sense of finality, however, Adichie’s text refuses closure in ways that ultimately suggest an alternative both to the notion that the novel has an apolitical, purely tragic ending, and to dominant narratives about the Biafran secession’s “inevitable” failure. This reading thus intervenes in critical conversations about Half of a Yellow Sun, the Biafran state, and secession and self-determination throughout Africa. If Kainene’s disappearance does not only testify to the tragedies of war, and if her character allegorically corresponds to Biafra, then what political possibilities might her disappearance allow? Does Biafra—and in turn, the possibility of secession—remain at large too? Far from the prevalent scholarly and political rhetoric that relegates Biafra to a narrow three-year time frame, Adichie’s novel conceives of a Biafran existence beyond the pages of some finalized history. / text

Submitted by Valquíria Barbieri (kikibarbi@hotmail.com) on 2017-06-01T21:23:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2014_João Felipe Assis de Freitas.pdf: 1260880 bytes, checksum: 9981df3635cce75a4c3b1642d4c36ebe (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Jordan (jordanbiblio@gmail.com) on 2017-06-05T16:33:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2014_João Felipe Assis de Freitas.pdf: 1260880 bytes, checksum: 9981df3635cce75a4c3b1642d4c36ebe (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-05T16:33:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2014_João Felipe Assis de Freitas.pdf: 1260880 bytes, checksum: 9981df3635cce75a4c3b1642d4c36ebe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-29 / CAPES / O romance Half of a Yellow Sun, de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, apresenta uma narrativa em que a experiência dos cronotopos auxilia na compreensão do contexto da Guerra de Biafra (1967-1970). O enredo, estruturado em quatro partes interdependentes, possibilita, pelo menos, dois eixos de observação crítica: a) a percepção da formação das identidades dos sujeitos pós-modernos/pós-coloniais nesse cenário africano e b) a fragmentação da noção de espaço-tempo desses indivíduos. As figuras ficcionais do romance são sujeitos posicionados numa época e local de mudanças, confrontando o deslocamento das antigas tradições culturais africanas e a presença cada vez maior de valores estrangeiros, ocidentais. Portanto, o objetivo do nosso trabalho é o de analisar a construção dos cronotopos a partir de uma perspectiva com base nas personagens Ugwu, Olanna e Richard, bem como em seus respectivos núcleos de participação. Em um ambiente pós-colonial de produção, a obra possibilita ao leitor a oportunidade de conhecer literariamente a estória de um dos maiores traumas do continente africano presenciado por nigerianos e biafrenses e de sentir o sopro do vento da globalização pelas páginas do texto. / Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel authored by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, features a narrative in which the experience of chronotopoi assists in understanding the context of the Biafran War (1967-1970). The plot, divided into four interdependent parts, enables at least two axes of critical observation: a) the perception of the formation of postmodern/post-colonial subjects in an African scenery and b) the fragmentation of the concept of space-time in those individual’s experience. Fictional figures in the novel are positioned in an epoch and place of change and transition, confronting the displacement of ancient African cultural traditions and the increasing presence of foreign, Western values. Therefore, the aim of our work is to analyze the construction of chronotopoi from a perspective based on characters such as Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard, as well as their respective nuclei of participation. In a post-colonial context of production, this novel allows the reader the opportunity to know the literary story of one of the major traumas in the African context witnessed by Nigerians and Biafrans and to feel the breath of the wind of globalization through the pages of the text.