ABDULKADIR, ALIYU YAKUBU
Lecturer @ Federal University of Kashere, Gombe State, Nigeria
Bio
Aliyu Yakubu Abdulkadir holds a BA (Hons) in English from Gombe State University and is currently rounding off his MA in English Literature at the University of Jos, and MA in Cultural Sustainability at the SDG Graduate School, University of Maiduguri, where he is a DAAD fellow. He teaches prose fiction and creative writing in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University of Kashere, Gombe State, Nigeria. His poetry collection, The Banquet, was published in 2017.
Geographical location :
Research Area and Interest :
Social Media
Panel
Black Power in Literature
Presentation
Decolonising Caribbean History through the Art of Fiction: An Analysis of Kei Miller’s The Last Warner Woman
Colonial history of the Caribbean is replete with errors, deletions, distortions, fabrications and omissions, all too often intentional. These have contributed to the vast legacy of dispossession, exploitation, and betrayal in the aftermath of colonialism. Among the various machineries that Caribbean intellectuals of African descent have employed to challenge and address these inadequacies is the art of fiction. The present study examines The Last Warner Woman, a novel by the Jamaican author Kei Miller, evaluating the various ways it re-historicises the region’s past. Through the theoretical approach of New Historicism, the study critically explores the thematic and stylistic textures of Miller’s novel, and finds that underneath the moving narrative of the warner woman’s life lies a deliberate re-presentation of the regional history, the result being a nuanced account of its cultural diversity, an exposition of the pretensions and hubris of the colonisers and the church, and a tribute to the power of African identity to evolve while resisting attempts to extirpate it in the diaspora. Through the art of fiction, Miller escapes the alienating effects of colonial history, repossessing the past and demonstrating that history is in fact, no mere documentary realism but a part and parcel of evolving reality. Like novelists Alejo Carpentier, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris before him, among others, Miller recognises a capacity for recreation and renewal in the myths, legends, and folktales that arose from the cultural encounters that shaped and continue to shape the Caribbean