Sexuality and the Balance of Power in Chika Unigwe's on Black Sisters' Street and Tony Alum's Images from a Broken Mirror

Abstract

This research investigates the concepts of sexuality and the balance of power as metanarratives in Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street and Tony Alum's Images from a Broken Mirror. These texts belong to the growing literary oeuvre of the African Diaspora literary tradition, and owe interpretative allegiance to the ethno-cultural heritage of social texts, texts that are expressive of deep notions and axiomatic functionalities of socio-historical experiences: conventions and permutations. They chronicle chilling accounts of race, displacement, sexuality, culture and hormonal (power) trade narrated from the perspective of difference, and through the eyes of young Black females thrown together by fate in a battle for survival and individuality. Structured into five chapters, this research provides theoretical and critical basis for the narratives in the texts, narratives that reveal cultural and social symbols referencing sexuality and the balance of power. This work is written bearing in mind the discussions and theoretical arguments existing from research inquests into the position of women in the theorizing and contextualization of postcolonialism. To this end, the socio-theoretical orientation of Postcolonial Feminism is chosen as an investigative framework for this research. This orientation is driven by a recognition of the need to represent the subaltern, those suppressed female identities who are both victims of racial and gender preconceptions, and are caught in a mesh of expectations and frustrations in a bursting bid to survive the doldrums of economic privation