Poetics of Self in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus: A Postcolonial Bildungsroman Study

Abstract

This study situates itself in the literary representations of the interplay of gender, class, color, race, postcoloniality, power politics, violence, identity, and the African self in a Bildungsroman. It focuses on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus as a Bildungsroman of woman, written from a postcolonial outlook. The narrative centers on the growth, development, and experiences of the female Bildungsheld, Kambili, who eventually attains epiphany, and explores her true self and identity. In other words, the study follows an eclectic approach, which further focuses on Kambili’s odyssey of encountering freedom by tearing out the different challenges, and insecurities during the process of subjectivization, objectification, and interpellation towards her journey of becoming in a political context of a military coup in Nigeria. As a result, the article emphasizes the confluence of history and literature, as well as Africans’ experiences in the postcolonial world in general, and accounts for Kambili’s becoming in particular.