Speaker
Description
This presentation examines the concept of resilience in Buchi Emecheta’s The Second Class Citizen and In the Ditch. It focuses on Adah, a Nigerian immigrant and single mother in London, and how she navigates the challenges of migration, poverty, and gender discrimination across different stages of life and postcolonial settings. Using Michael Ungar’s theoretical framework, as outlined in The Social Ecology of Resilience, this analysis employs close reading to show that Emecheta sees resilience as a product of interactions between individuals and their socio-cultural environments in addition to personal traits. It highlights how Adah’s survival and adaptation in postcolonial Nigeria and England depend on her ability to forge a new identity and claim her own spaces by navigating and negotiating familial, communal, and institutional resources. This approach criticizes a narrow focus on internal capacities, which may romanticize resilience, overlook systemic vulnerabilities, and place undue burdens on marginalized people. By addressing these aspects, the study challenges literary narratives that primarily romanticize individual resilience and ignore environmental factors. Furthermore, it argues that Emecheta makes a strong case for addressing the root causes of social crises, devising effective strategies to counter systemic discrimination, and transforming oppressive conditions, rather than merely accepting them as inevitable.
| Keywords | Buchi Emecheta, postcolonial world, resilience, social ecology of resilience |
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| fahimeserhatti@gmail.com |