BRUISED BODIES, TRAUMA AND RESISTANCE IN AKACHI ADIMORA-EZEIGBO’S TRAFFICKED AND CHRIS ABANI’S BECOMING ABIGAIL

Abstract

In recent years, young girls in sub-Saharan Africa have become increasingly endangered due to human trafficking. They are not only subjected to modern slavery and forced prostitution, but their transported bodies are also bruised and traumatized in Europe. These harrowing experiences are captured in African diasporic narratives. This essay therefore examines the bruised bodies of trafficked girls, their traumatic experiences, and their resistance in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked and Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail. Through coerced prostitution, these girls are reduced to mere commodities, deceived with false job opportunities, and forced into selling their bodies in Europe. However, the essay demonstrates that, despite the horrific constraints of racial discrimination, dehumanization, and commodification, the writers deploy different strategies of resistance to liberate their female protagonists. In their struggle for survival, some characters employ subtle tools of resistance, such as sisterhood and the infliction of injury on their oppressors, while others adopt more combative strategies, including killing their oppressors. The study adopts a qualitative research methodology and draws on Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory as its theoretical framework. This choice is based on the premise that the issue under investigation involves multidimensional questions of identity formation, characterization, and traumatic disorder. The essay concludes that although the combative strategy of inflicting physical injury or killing oppressors may be condemned as extreme, it reflects Adimora-Ezeigbo’s and Abani’s stylistic commitment to denouncing the continued bruising and traumatization of the female body, whether on African soil or abroad.