Historiography and verisimilitude in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian literary artist that taps and weaves quite a variety of historical resources into her artistic creations. This research investigates the strategies and purposes of such deliberate infusions in Adichie’s two novels: Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Using New Historicism as a theoretical template, the study reveals that there are solid relationships between the characters, settings, incidents, conflicts and even certain discourses created and represented in the fictions with notable historical figures, issues and occurrences. This implies that Adichie models a number of her fictional characters, settings and incidents after diverse memorable historical realities. Indeed, New Historicism as a critical template brings literature and history closer to each other in that it breaks down the barriers between artistic production and other kinds of social production by situating a work of art in its historical context. The study posits that the author purposefully and effectively utilized a myriad of historical materials drawn from her society to foreground meanings in her works. This clearly demonstrates that as works of art, the novels are products as well as producers of discourse in society and are neither derived from nor exist in a vacuum. Adichie’s fictions are, therefore, strongly connected to their historical and socio-political backgrounds and thus simultaneously reflect and alter the societies from which they emerge. The fictions, then, are part and parcel of a much wider political, cultural and socio-economic discourse. Far from being unconnected to the historical moments of their creation, the texts are directly involved in history.