Home, Homelessness and Imperial Home in ToniMorrison'sParadiseand Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie'sPurple Hibiscus

Abstract

African American writer Toni Morrison'sParadiseand Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie'sPurple Hibiscusrevolve around the issue of home and homelessness on racial ground. Situated in the historical context of late 1960s and early 1970s, the novelParadisedramatizes the complication of establishing areal home in already highly "racialized" society of America. The struggle of the former slaves for establishing their home is shattered as they are rejected by the white communities as well as their own light skinned brothers. The establishment of the insulated all-black town, Haven and later, Ruby by these former slaves, in fact, is the aftermath of the same racial rejection and exclusion. The establishment and protection of their real home town Ruby that is supposed to be the space of equality, love, care and affection, albeit bring them in direct confrontation with the nearby convent women who have garnered the convent as their real home followed by the traumatic and painful exclusion from their home. Similarly, narrated by a fifteen year old narrator Kambili, the novelPurple Hibiscusmoves around the complication that teenager Kambili and her late-teenager brother Jaja undergo in the presence of their repressive Anglicized father Eugene. The product of the first missionary schools in Nigeria Eugene, a catholic devotee, utterly dislikes African culture, ritual and worship and calls them heathen and barbaric. His family members live in fear of his punishments. Eugene's normative house cannot be a real home to Jaja, Kambili and Beatrice. Unlike Eugene's sophisticated English-loving house, Ifeoma's rented house in Nsukka welcomes Igbo songs, music, laughter and fun. This Igbo-culture loving home becomes a space of attachment, understanding, love, care and affection and thus gives a true sense of 'home' they had desperately longed for.