NARRATING TRAUMA AS A STRATEGY OF RECLAIMING THE FEMALE AGENCY IN TOMI ADEYEMI’S LEGACY OF ORISHA TRILOGY

Abstract

This research examined how Tomi Adeyemi’s female characters reclaims agency through narration of trauma in her Legacy of Orisha trilogy (Children of Blood and Bone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Children of Anguish and Anarchy). The study was guided by the following objectives: to examine how strategies of first-person narrative voice and temporality depict female trauma, explore how the narrators reclaim agency and empowerment to achieve healing and self-actualization and analyse how narrating trauma shapes the development of female identities in Adeyemi’s trilogy. The female identities in the trilogy refer to the young female protagonists who are on the journey of reclaiming agency in the aftermath of trauma. The study engaged the theories of Frantz Fanon, Cathy Caruth, Homi Bhabha, and Gayastri Spivak to interrogate the intersection between trauma, identity, and resistance. Fanon’s postcolonial psychology illuminated how colonial violence produces psychic trauma allowing an understanding of the female characters’ internal conflicts. Caruth’s trauma theory to highlighted how traumatic experiences are represented in trauma fiction and how the victims of trauma reclaim agency in the aftermath of traumatic experiences with reference to the Legacy of Orisha trilogy. Spivak’s concept of subaltern was essential in examining how female voices, often silenced within colonial structures, use narration as a means of self expression and resistance. The methodology involved close reading of the primary texts to identify the scenarios where the author has used first-person narration and manifestation of trauma and what they represent. Narratology was also useful in the critical reading of the trilogy to help analyse how voice and temporal shifts communicate painful experiences. This study is an important contribution to the interpretation of African indigenous knowledge and its positioning in the Western modernity as it foregrounds the juxtapositions of African indigenous imagery in modern symbols of trauma. It contributed to the interpretation of African indigenous knowledge by showing how Tomi Adeyemi integrates African spiritual and cultural frameworks into her portrayal of trauma, thereby challenging the dominance of Western modernity in defining psychological and historical suffering. The findings of the study are a testament to the role of narration in representing traumatic experiences of the girl child, how they reclaim their agency and how the experiences contribute to the shaping of their identities.