Narrating Nigerian Women’s Immigration: Symbolism of Disillusion in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

Abstract

Abstract: The link between the narrative structure of a work of fiction and the theme it portrays is not always obvious. This article seeks to establish the relationship between the themes of immigration and disillusion in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and how it is reflected in the form of narration. The study is anchored on symbolism and narratology as its theoretical frameworks. Thus, one argues that the disillusion experienced by African immigrants in the novel characterizes the narrative form marked by a stylistic disorder. The analysis first offers an overview of the novel's narrative structure. Second, it highlights how weather, colors, and nature are used as symbols of disillusion. Finally, the study of the narrative order in Unigwe’s novel suggests that the non-chronological occurrence of events in the novel not only symbolizes disillusion but also anachronies that picture characters’ displacement through the "flashbacks” and “flashforwards” in time and space. Keywords: Anachronies, Disillusion, Immigration, Narratology, Symbolism