Exploring the Concept of Childhood and Girls’ Experiences in Nigerian Fiction: A Study of Kaine Agary‘s Yellow-Yellow

Abstract

Different people often witness or experience specific societal practices as they grow up in their respective cultural milieus. Literary writers cannot be alienated from these societal experiences. Many novelists in Africa therefore utilize fiction as a mirror for reflecting the experiences of people in different societies, as well as a window through which historical and social issues are viewed. Contemporary or Modern African fiction in its attempt to address the girl child question focuses attention on exposing the challenges and experiences of the female gender as well as recreating their images in order to create new and better personalities. Writers aim at girls’ emancipation rather than bemoaning their subjection in society; depict them as struggling actively to attain freedom in order to overcome societal subjugation and challenges. Hence, writers have helped in recreating the image of the vulnerable in society; they have helped in bringing about the emergence of a new personality/character in control not only of her situation and destiny, but also of the opportunities hitherto denied her, for self-fulfillment. These experiences are thus manifested through different relationships. The paper demonstrates how Kaine Agary employed fiction to explore the experiences of the girl child in her novel, Yellow- Yellow. In the novel, the novelist creates female characters that help the readers understand the factors that cause violence on the female gender, especially in certain societies where societal challenges exist. This paper presents the view that societal problems or challenges are factors that push young girls to leave their home lands to a foreign land in search of greener pasture (wealth, success, better life). Hence, their struggle to succeed and other societal challenges (like rape, early marriage, brutality, sexual exploitation, and hunger) become the society’s crime against the female gender. The negative consequence of this is that young women become preys to men and are often violated. This shatters their dreams and leaves them hopeless. This work adopts Feminism and Ecofeminism as its theoretical framework in order to understand the relationship between the characters and the effects of oil exploration activities on natural environment and the female gender in Niger Delta. Thus, the degradation of the environment and the place of the girl child become a major thrust of the work.