The Notion of No-Longer-Victim Diaspora in Unigwe's Better Never Than Late

Year 2023, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 17 - 26, 21.06.2023

Nizar Milhem

Abstract

Up until recently, scholarship has looked at diasporic communities as mere victims, displaced, marginalized and vulnerable. Yet today the experiences of diasporas are becoming enriching and creative, and the diasporic subjects are so prosperous that it is legitimate to designate some as no-longer-victim diasporas. This idea is brought to the reader quite expressly by Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe. Her major works depict the life of the African community in Flanders. Her fictional characters are struck by adversities in their exile, but they remain determined to go on. This act of transcending of diaspora– overcoming the victim stage– is, to a large degree, hinted at through the notion of 'longing for homeland' in the short story collection Better Never Than Late. This paper considers the ways in which the narrative presents migrants' longing for homeland as a strategy for finding meaning to their current state and how this eventually helps migrants remain resilient in the face of adversities, adapt to the host culture, shape up and start anew.

Keywords

No-longer-victim-diaspora, Longing for homeland, African Literature

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