Feminist consciousness and assertiveness in Ifeoma Okoye’s Behind the Clouds and Chimere

Abstract

In recent years, African women writers, among them Ifeoma Okoye, have focused on representing the lives and experiences of women in the African society in their literary works. Okoye is an African feminist who advocates feminist consciousness as a concept through which women can be enlightened for consciousness-raising, empowerment and assertiveness in her novels, Behind the Clouds and Chimere, while emphasizing education, economic independence and sisterhood as avenues for feminist consciousness-raising and actualization. This paper will, therefore, adopt the feminist approach in analyzing these works with a view to evaluating the impact of feminist consciousness on the lives of Okoye’s female characters and how effectively they utilize education, economic independence and sisterhood to strategize, redefine themselves, challenge the status quo and attain their goals.