MIGRATION, HETEROSEXUALITY AND IMAGES OF DEVALUED WOMANHOOD IN SELECTED WORKS OF ADICHIE, AGARY AND BAINGANA

Maureen Amaka Azuike

Department of English

University of Jos, Jos, Plateau state.

Email:amakaazuike@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The artistic presentation of women in contemporary literary texts by female writers calls for urgent rethinking. The reason is that contemporary African works of fiction, written by women, are continuously replete with images of devalued womanhood and female sexual mercantilism which have increasingly encouraged the break-down of universal laws of moral conduct. This study examines the portrayal of women as migratory beings with lascivious thoughts and promiscuous intentions in Adichie’s Americanah, Agary’s Yellow-Yellow and Baingana’s Tropical Fish. The study reveals how women’s ways are darkly garbed in immorality and their words are tainted with streams of profanities. Therefore, the feminist and sociological approaches are adopted in this study because they relate literature to a larger discourse of women and the society and see literature as an instrument with which to transform society. The conclusion of this study is that the endorsement given by contemporary feminist writers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality, especially in the selected texts under analysis, is an anathema to traditional cultures and justifies deviant sexual behaviours in a world where sex is trivialized and is no longer treated as sacrosanct.