The Art of Storytelling as Resistance: Examining Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Name of Author : Sanju S

Abstract: In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970 is no longer a distant historical event but rather a deeply personal and tragic one. This paper discusses how Adichie uses four main characters—Olanna, Odenigbo, Richard, and Ugwu—to subvert simplistic readings of African victimhood and retrieve voices silenced by colonial history. By using a non-linear plot structure and resisting the temptation of a black-and-white morality, the novel shows how the corruption wrought by war is matched by a kind of revelation of the soul’s inner workings. Additionally, Adichie exercises narrative power by making English bend to accommodate the cadence of Igbo thought processes, thereby undermining the colonialist perspective that has long mediated African stories. In this way, the story presented in Half of a Yellow Sun is also about storytelling itself as a form of survival and political agency, a way to restore the shattered self-respect of victims and to see to it that their account of history prevails.

Keywords : survival and political agency

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