Diaspora digital literature: role reversal and the construction of self in selected Ikheloa’s autobiographies

• Authors: Onuoha, Onyekachi Peter

Abstracts

EN

The digital space serves, for the diaspora Nigerians, as a creative platform for identity and cultural preservation: a way through which they maintain connection with their homeland. This notion is evidently articulated in their creative writings on the digital space through where they imaginatively explore diverse social realities and personal experiences. This paper sets out to examine diaspora digital literature: role reversal and the construction self in selected Ikheloa’s Autobiographies. It interrogates memories of the home concept and the lamentation of the self as a social construct. The mechanism adopted by Ikheloa in trying to manage the other (new personality) while struggling to reconcile the memory of gender roles in Nigeria. Memory is an anchor and a strategy for survival for most diaspora writers. Memory of home is emphasized in the narrator’s autobiographies and a desire of home as representation of freedom and authority. But the price for a better life for his children seems to hold him captive and as such, he practices ‘fatherhood’. However, this practice is with an endless wish of returning home as a means of preserving his mind while carrying out his new gender roles in America. Psychoanalytic is adopted as premise for the analyses of the texts.

Keywords

EN

Diaspora; Digital Literature; Role Reversal; Construction of self; autobiographies

• Publisher: Akademia Pedagogiki Specjalnej im. Marii Grzegorzewskiej. Wydawnictwo APS
• Journal: International Journal of Pedagogy, Innovation and New Technologies
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 5(2)
• Pages: 33-42

Dates

published

2019-01-15

Contributors

author

Onuoha, Onyekachi Peter

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/01.3001.0012.8541