Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War

Wale Adebanwi; Ogechi E. Anyanwu; Alabi Adetayo; Ofure O. M. Aito; Jane Bryce; Fiona Bateman; Meredith Coffey; Hugh Hodges; Biodun Jeyifo; Raphael Chijioke Njoku; Cyril I. Obi; Austine Okwu; Bukola Oyeniyi; Akachi Odoemene; Olukunle Ojeleye; Christian Chukwuma Opata; Ode Ogede; G. N. Uzoigwe; Françoise Ugochukwu; Egodi Uchendu

doi:10.1017/9781782047735

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Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War

Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War

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Omaka, Arua Oko 2016. Victor’s justice: atrocities in postwar Nigeria. Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 32, Issue. 3, p. 228.

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Unnithan, A. Karthika and Jayaraman, Harini 2018. “The New African Woman”: A Study on Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra as a Personal War for Womanhood. Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 22, Issue. 2-3, p. 274.

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Mougoué, Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta 2018. Gender and (Militarized) Secessionist Movements in Africa. Meridians, Vol. 17, Issue. 2, p. 338.

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Edited by Toyin Falola, Ogechukwu Ezekwem

Publisher:: Boydell & Brewer
Online publication date:: June 2021
Print publication year:: 2016
Online ISBN:: 9781782047735
DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782047735

Subjects:: Military History, History

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The Nigeria-Biafra War lasted from 6 July 1966 to 15 January 1970, during which time the post-colonial Nigerian state fought to bring the South-Eastern region, which had seceded as the State or Republic of Biafra, back into the newly independent but ideologically divided nation. This volume discusses the trends and methodologies in the civil war writings, both fictional and non-fictional, and is the first to analyse in detail the intellectual and historical circumstances that helped to shape these often contentious texts.
The recent high-profile fictional account by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun was preceded by works by Ken Saro-Wiwa, Elechi Amadi, Kole Omotoso, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Chukwuemeka Ike and Chris Abani, all of which stronglyconvey the horrific human cost of the war on individuals and their communities. The non-fictional accounts, including Chinua Achebe's last work There Was a Country, are biographies, personal accounts and essays on the causes and course of the war, its humanitarian crises and the collaboration of foreign nations. The contributors examine writers' and protagonists' use of contemporary published texts as a means of continued resistance and justification of the war, the problems of objectivity encountered in memoirs, and how authors' backgrounds and sources determine the kinds of biases that influenced their interpretations, including the gendered divisions in Nigeria-Biafra War scholarship and sources. By initiating a dialogue on the civil war literature, this volume engages a much-needed discourse on the problems confronting a culturally diverse post-war Nigeria.

Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University DistinguishedTeaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Ogechukwu Ezekwem is a PhD student in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin.

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Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War

This Book has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.

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Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vii

Notes on Contributors
pp viii-xiv

List of Abbreviations
pp xv-xv

Timeline
pp xvi-xix

Map of Biafra 30 May 1967 – 1 May 1969
pp xx-xx

1 - Scholarly Trends, Issues, and Themes: Introduction
pp 1-14

Part I - On The History Of The Nigeria-Biafra War
pp 15-16

2 - Background to the Nigerian Civil War
pp 17-39

3 - Connecting Theory with Reality: Understanding the Causes of the Nigeria-Biafra War
pp 40-61

4 - The Ahiara Declaration and the Fate of Biafra in a Postcolonial/Bi-Polar World Order
pp 62-80

5 - The Ahiara Declaration: Polemics and Politics
pp 81-108

Part II - Critical Debates On The Nigerian Crisis
pp 109-110

6 - Beyond the Blame Game: Theorizing the Nigeria-Biafra War
pp 111-129

7 - Confronting the Challenges of Nationhood in Pre-Biafran Texts: Newspaper Narratives on the Eve of War
pp 130-165

8 - Literary Separatism: Ethnic Balkanization in Nigeria-Biafra War Narratives
pp 166-193

9 - Local Writers and Commitments to Ethnic Sentiments
pp 194-206

Part III - The War In Fiction, Memoir, And Imagination
pp 207-208

10 - Memoirs and the Question of Objectivity: Revisiting Alexander Madiebo’s The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War and Robert Collis’s Nigeria in Conflict
pp 209-229

11 - ‘War is War’: Recreating the Dreams and Nightmares of the Nigeria-Biafra War through the Eyes of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy
pp 230-244

12 - First, There Was a Country: Then There Wasn’t: Reflections on Achebe’s There was a Country
pp 245-264

13 - Ethnic Minorities and the Biafran National Imaginary in Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
pp 265-283

14 - Biafra in the Irish Imagination: War and Famine in Banville’s An End to Flight and Forristal’s Black Man’s Country
pp 284-313

15 - Magical Realism or Science Fiction: The Nigerian Civil War and Ali Mazrui’s The Trial of Christopher Okigbo
pp 314-327

16 - Biafra, an Impractical Mission?: Revisiting S.O. Mezu’s Behind the Rising Sun and I.N.C. Aniebo’s The Anonymity of Sacrifice
pp 328-360

17 - Neo-Colonialism, Biafra, and the Causes of War as Imagined in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra
pp 361-379

18 - No, This is Not Redemption: The Biafra War Legacy in Chris Abani’s GraceLand
pp 380-400

Part IV - Locating Gender In Nigeria-Biafra War Literature
pp 401-402

19 - Gender and the Construction of the Nigeria-Biafra War Scholarship
pp 403-422

20 - What is the Country? Reimagining National Space in Women’s Writing on the Biafran War
pp 423-453

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