Breaking the Silence: The Influence of Class,Culture and Colonisation on African Women's Fight for Emancipation and Equality in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus

Abstract

This thesis will examine how colonisation has influenced the African women’s fight for emancipation and equality as depicted in Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Purple Hibiscus (2003) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Dangarembga and Adichie individually are contemporary African post-colonial writers who have drawn worldwide attention with their novels about young women’s fight to be heard and seen in their respective societies. Their stories independently depict problems such as racism, sexual oppression, religious fanaticism and cultural alienation as experienced by their characters in post-colonial Africa. The British Empire’s colonial rule in Africa lasted for more than a century and had serious consequences for its native population. Colonialism was particularly hard on the women who were made invisible in the African society. Not only were they oppressed in terms of being colonized, they were equally oppressed in their own traditional society.