32nd Annual Student Research Conference
Powerful and Powerless Women: Sex as a Source of Empowerment and Exploitation in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
Julie H. Noringriis
Dr. Hena Ahmad, Faculty Mentor
Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun follows the lives of several people before and during the Biafran-Nigerian War of the 1960s. Sex plays a dominant part throughout the novel, and is a force that drives the novel’s characters for both good and evil. Sex is shown in its most pleasurable, consensual form as a powerful tool that brings lovers together juxtaposed by it’s most abusive and forceful violation of human conduct. Through the different characters, both major and minor, Adichie portrays the act of sex, sexual needs, and their various consequences. Half of a Yellow Sun argues, that in a time of war and a time of peace, sex is an empowering act that can further one’s position in life, romantically or materially. However, it can also change one’s life for the worse in a heartbeat and deprave one of a most basic human right: one’s own body.
Keywords: Sex, Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, Women, Empowerment, Chimamanda, Body, Exploitation
Topic(s):English
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 305-5
Location: BH 241
Time: 2:30