Escritoras dos emaranhados dos tempos: narrativas de identidades em Buchi Emecheta, Sefi Atta e Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Nigéria, 1970-2017)

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyze, through History, narratives of identities through women, black and African in The joys of motherhood (1979, Buchi Emecheta), Everything good will come (2004, Sefi Atta) and Stay with Me (2017, Ayòbámi Adébáyò). This objective is posed in the following question: what narratives do Buchi Emecheta, Sefi Atta, and Ayòbámi Adébáyò elaborate in which it is possible to understand processes of identity constructions, through women, black and African, in Nigeria, between 1970 to 2017, recorded in the novels mentioned above? The main historical sources are the works The joys of motherhood, Everything good will happen and Stay with Me and used as support interviews and essays produced by Emecheta, Adébáyò and Atta. The time and space of the research is set in Nigeria between the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, periods of the production and publication of the works. The construction of the research is based on the dialogue with the African, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Studies fields. Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017), Sefi Atta (1964- ) and Ayòbámi Adébáyò (1988- ) construct narratives of identities built from experiences, memories and stories passed between generations, mediated through the experiences of the writers, which include their efforts as researchers, their specificities and circulations in coloniality as black African women. The narratives of identities presented by the authors are of women who, in the contexts of the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century in Nigeria, experience that identity in plural, situated, and moving ways. Constructed from different ways of positioning themselves, and often keeping their distance from racialized colonial perceptions, they claim their own perceptions about themselves, their communities, and histories.