WOMEN STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL AND THE CRISES OF CHANGE IN BUCHI EMECHETA’S DESTINATION BIAFRA

Abstract

Feminist scholars agitate for gender equality, equity and fairness within the socio-political space of the world. The movement started as a white middle class women association in Europe and America growing to include scholars who developed sister theories peculiar to other cultures and regions of the world including Black America and Africa. This paper examines Emecheta’s Destination Biafraand adopts Womanism to study the author’s characterisation of women. The paper also employs Afolabi’s perception of this theory to examine women portrayed in the struggle of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 in the text. The paper discovers that the author, a product of colonialism, empowers women against the humiliation, oppression, injustice, inequality and domination of man, and rejects the separation of human qualities on the basis of gender. The author examines women who defy the stereotype of tradition, are aggressive, radical, revolutionary, fight in wars, form militia groups, and perform duties generally done by men. Women in the text defy marriage tenets to take up leadership roles to become symbols of justice and equity. It is the submission of this work that Emecheta reverses the tendency by some male writers to depict the woman as a being to be seen and not heard. As such, she raises the consciousness of the African woman to be liberal, resilient, focused, assertive and purposeful even in the face of troubles, hardship, revolution and war.