The environmental crisis and African women’s displacements in War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v62i1.18874Keywords:
Africanfuturism, War Girls, the environmental crisis, new technologies, posthumanismAbstract
In the following article, I explore several types of dislocations (environmental, war, patriarchal, to name but a few) in Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel War Girls (2019), analysed from the methodological perspective of Africanfuturism. The aim of the article is to show how the second wave of African future-oriented literature (diasporic in this case) looks back to the past (the Nigerian Civil War) in order to seek solutions for the ongoing current problems, such as the devastation of the natural environment, climate change, the participation of underage soldiers in military conflicts, and new forms of capitalism and neolonialisation. The novel is read via historical, sociological, and frequently anthropological sources to demonstrate how the speculative discourse can be firmly grounded in the scientific context. Additionally, I propose a feminist and utopian reading of War Girls. The text is divided into parts where key elements of Africanfuturism—such as digitalisation, nanotechnologies, Information Technology, African cosmologies, and oral tradition—are discussed in detail and are shown as existing at the same time, entangled with the past and future simultaneously, within human and more-than-human worlds.
Downloads
References
Adeoti, A. Gbemisola. “Present Tension in Future Tenses—Re-Writing Africa into the Twenty-first Century: Introduction.” African Literature and the Future, edited by Adeoti A. Gbemisola. CODESRIA, 2015, pp. 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh8qxx8.4
Agbasiere, Joseph Thérèse. Women in Igbo Life and Thought. Routledge, 2000. E-book.
Anderson, Reynaldo & Charles E. Jones. “The Rise of Astro-Blackness: Preface.” Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness, edited by Reynaldo Anderson & Charles E. Jones. Lexington, 2016, pp. vii–xviii.
Atwood, Margaret. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. Virago, 2012.
Awhefeada, Sunny. “Degraded Environment and Destabilized Women in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow.” Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes, edited by Ogaga Okuyade. African Heritage, 2013, pp. 95–108.
Barr, Marleen S. “‘All at One Point’ Conveys the Point, Period: Or Black Science Fiction is Bursting Out All Over.” Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr. Ohio State U P, 2008, pp. ix–xxiv.
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Sarah Crichton, 2008.
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity, 2013.
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon, 2004.
Carrington, André M. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. U of Minnesota P, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816678952.001.0001
Cascais, António Fernando. “The Metamorphic Body in Science Fiction: From Prosthetic Correction to Utopian Enhancement.” Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure, edited by Kathryn Allan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 61–72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343437_5
Dallaire, Roméo & Jessica Dee Humphreys. They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers. Random House Canada, 2010.
Dery, Mark. “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate and Tricia Rose.” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, edited by Mark Dery. Duke U P, 1994, pp. 179–222. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822396765-010
Egya, Sule E. Nature, Environment, and Activism in Nigerian Literature. Routledge, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003004578
Eichstaedt, Peter. First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Lawrence Hill, 2009.
Feghabo, Charles Cliff. “Isidore Okpewho’s Tides and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and a Day: A Kinesis of Eco-activisim from Theory to Praxis.” Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes, edited by Ogaga Okuyade. African Heritage, 2013, pp. 47–73.
Feldner, Maximilian. Narrating the New African Diaspora: 21st Century Nigerian Literature in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05743-5
Field, Sean. Oral History, Community, and Displacement: Imagining Memories in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011480_1
Giovetti, Olivia. “Timeline: 54 Years of hunger as a weapon of war.” Concern Worldwide. 3 Dec. 2021. https://www.concern.net/news/hunger-as-a-weapon-of-war-timeline.
Honwana, Alcinda. Child Soldiers in Africa. U of Pennsylvania P, 2006. DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204773
Irele, F. Abiola. The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora. Oxford U P, 2001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195086188.001.0001
Lavender III, Isiah. Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of A Movement. Ohio State U P, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26818/9780814214138
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship, translated by James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, & Rodney Needham (ed.). Beacon, 1969.
Mattar, Netty. “Prosthetic Bodies: The Convergence of Disability, Technology, and Capital in Peter Watts’s Blindsight and Ian McDonald’s River of Gods.” Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure, edited by Kathryn Allan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 75–87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343437_6
Mitchell, Beverly Eileen. “Human rights, dignity, and female child soldiers: a theological approach.” Female Child Soldiering, Gender Violence, and Feminist Theologies, edited by Susan Willhauck. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 13–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21982-6_2
Mowarin, Macauley. “Poetics of Environmental Agitation: A Stylistic Reading of Hope Eghagha’s Rhythms of the Last Testament and The Governor’s Lodge and Other Poems.” Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes, edited by Ogaga Okuyade. African Heritage, 2013, pp. 215–37.
Murray, Stuart. Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology and Cultural Futures. Liverpool U P, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789621648.001.0001
Nayar, Pramod K. Posthumanism. Polity, 2014.
Ogbeibu, Anthony E. & Blessing J. Oribhabor. “The Niger Delta Mangrove Ecosystem and Its Conservation Challenges.” Mangrove Biology, Ecosystem, and Conservation, edited by Orlex Baylen Yllano. IntechOpen, 2023. E-book.
Ojaide, Tanure. “Toward a Bioregional, Politico-Historical, and Sociocultural Identity of the Niger Delta.” The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta, edited by Tanure Ojaide & Enajite Ojaruega. Routledge, 2021, pp. 13–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003136750-3
Ojaruega, Enajite Eseoghene. “From the Niger Delta’s viewpoint: the Nigerian Civil War Literature.” The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta, edited by Tanure Ojaide & Enajite Ojaruega. Routledge, 2021, pp. 206–217. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003136750-23
Okeke-Ihejirika, Philomina, E. Negotiating Power and Privilege: Igbo Career Women in Contemporary Nigeria. Ohio U, 2004.
Okorafor, Nnedi. “Africanfuturism defined.” Nnedi’s Wahala Zone Blog. 19 Oct. 2019. https://nnedi.blogspot.com/2019/10/africanfuturism-defined.html.
Okorafor, Nnedi. “Sci-Fi stories that imagine a future Africa”. TED. 1 Nov. 2017. https://www.ted.com/talks/nnedi_okorafor_sci_fi_stories_that_imagine_a_future_africa.
Okoro, Dike. “Futuristic Themes and Science Fiction in Modern African Literature.” Futurism and the African Imagination: Literature and Other Arts, edited by Dike Okoro. Routledge, 2020, pp. 3–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003179146-1
Okpewho, Isidore. Blood on the Tides: The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology. U of Rochester P, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781580468473
Okuyade, Ogaga. “Introduction: African Cultural Art Forms, Eco-Activism, and (Eco)-logical Consciousness.” Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes, edited by Ogaga Okuyade. African Heritage, 2013, pp. ix–xviii.
Onyebuchi, Tochi. War Girls. Razorbill, 2019.
Oyěwùmi, Oyèrónké, ed. African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood. African World, 2003.
Oyiaku, Emmanuel. Odinani: The Igbo Sacred Tradition. Independently Published, 2021. E-book.
Parikka, Jussi. A Geology of Media. U of Minnesota P, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816695515.001.0001
Poray-Wybranowska, Justyna. Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel. Routledge, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003079767
Rosen, David M. Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims. Rutgers U P, 2015.
Schalk, Sami. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Duke U P, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478093732
Simala, Inyami. “Orality, Modernity and African Development: Myth as Dialogue of Civilizations.” African Literature and the Future, edited by Adeoti A. Gbemisola. CODESRIA, 2015, pp. 15–31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh8qxx8.5
Streeby, Shelley. Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism. U of California P, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520967557
Uwiringiyimana, Sandra & Abigail Pesta. How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child. Katherine Tegen, 2017.
Wendland, Ernst R. “‘The Crocodile’s Wife’: Content and Communication Strategy in a Tale of Transformations.” Oral Literacy Performance in Africa: Beyond Text, edited by Nduka Otiono & Chiji Akọma. Routledge, 2021, pp. 44–68.
Vita-More, Natasha. “The Body Vehicle: Argument for Transhuman Bodies.” Modified Living as a Cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, et al. Routledge, 2021, pp. 58–67. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351107839-7
Willhauck, Susan, ed. Female Child Soldiering, Gender Violence, and Feminist Theologies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21982-6
Wiredu, Kwasi. “An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 40, no. 1, 2009, pp. 8–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30131182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/RAL.2009.40.1.8
Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. Lawrence Hill, 2013.
Zamalin, Alex. Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. Columbia U P, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/zama18740
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6465-6584
.png){kind=spacer}