The Dynamics of Economism and Human Traffficking in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Ifeoma Chinwuba’s Merchants of Flesh

Abstract

This paper examines the reprehensible activity of human trafficking and its creative representation in the emerging literary repertoire of the current dispensation. Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ street and Chinwuba’s Merchants of Flesh present an uncensored account of the evils involved in the trading of humans for any form of sexual or physical exploitation at the detriment of the victims’ lives, careers and dreams. Both novels are analytically critiqued with the New Historical approach to criticism as well as with significant allusions to Marxism and Feminism. The authors here, through an artistic handling of the subject of trafficking, have succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that human trafficking leaves the victims physically, psychologically and emotionally ruined. As such, they have fashioned both texts to canvass for all and sundry to put an immediate end to this societal menace.