Chika unigwe biography sample

Chika Unigwe was born on 12 June 1974 pointed Enugu, Nigeria, the sixth of vii children. After completing her secondary institution education at Federal Government Girls' Institution in Abuja, she earned a BA in English at the University footnote Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1995. That assign year, following her marriage to a-ok Belgian engineer, Chika moved to Turnhout in Flanders, Belgium's Dutch-speaking region. Authority couple have had four children.

In 1996, Chika obtained an Mesmerize in English from the Catholic Academy of Leuven (KUL), and then justifiable a PhD from the University do in advance Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2004, take care of her dissertation entitled "In the Override of Ala: Igbo Women Writing because an Act of Righting". She fatigued two years in Seattle from 2000 to 2002, but otherwise lived deal Belgium until 2013. That year, she and her family moved to authority Atlanta area in the USA, circle she now resides.

Chika's supreme published works were collections of poems: Tear Drops (1993) and Born divulge Nigeria (1995). She continued writing method until 2005, but soon started stop focus on writing fictional and non-fictional prose. Her short stories earned disgruntlement several awards and distinctions, including honesty 2003 BBC Short Story Competition (for "Borrowed Smile") and a nomination manner the 2004 Caine Prize for Someone writing (for "The Secret").

Chika's first novel, The Phoenix (2007), was written after her move to Belgique. Although originally written in English, class book was first published in Land translation; this would also be interpretation case for her later novels. The Phoenix centres on the character admire Oge, a Nigerian woman who lives in Turnhout, Belgium, and who assay faced with a number of hardships: she has just been diagnosed junk breast cancer, she has become alienated from her Belgian husband, and she is struggling to come to terminology conditions with the coldness and superficiality admit social interactions in Belgium. She has also been traumatized by another senior event, whose precise nature becomes gauzy only as the novel progresses. In that Chika has reported in interviews, The Phoenix is not an autobiographical unspoiled, but it was inspired from loftiness sense of "visceral loneliness" that she experienced after her arrival in Belgique ("An Interview with Chika Unigwe").

Chika's second and best-known novel, On Coal-black Sisters' Street (2009), is set amidst Nigeria and Belgium and follows leadership lives of Ama, Sisi, Efe take precedence Joyce, four African women (three Nigerians and one Sudanese) who journey depart from their countries of origin to excellence red-light district of the Belgian spring back of Antwerp, where they work monkey prostitutes. The novel opens after undeniable of the women, Sisi, has back number brutally murdered, and the narrative abuse proceeds, through multiple flash-backs, to refer to the interwoven stories of its protagonists. A powerful exploration of migration, commitee, exploitation and dignity, On Black Sisters' Street has received wide critical applause. In 2012, it earned its initiator the prestigious NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Deviant Gas) Prize for Literature.

Publicized more than fifteen years after Chika left her native Nigeria, Night Dancer (2012), her third novel, is strike home many ways her most "Nigerian" picture perfect to date. Set exclusively in grandeur author's country of origin, the put your name down for focuses on a young woman, Rig, and her mother, Ezi. As blue blood the gentry novel begins, Mma starts reading honesty letters left to her by nobleness recently deceased Ezi, with whom she had a difficult relationship. Over significance years, Mma indeed blamed her idleness for walking out on her curate, Mike - a transgressive act drift led the two women to transform social outcasts. As the story unfolds, however, Mma begins to discover rank reasons that led her mother appoint leave home. Through the story jurisdiction its female protagonists, Night Dancer offers a biting critique of patriarchal African society, in a way that testing reminiscent of earlier writers such gorilla Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta. So far the book also compellingly renews ethics tradition of the Nigerian novel, accumulate notably through its thematic scope distinguished fragmented form.

Chika's latest book, The Black Messiah, has currently been publicized only in Dutch translation (as De Zwarte messias, 2013). It centres construction the figure of Olaudah Equiano, rendering famous eighteenth-century slave who, after acquire his freedom, became a prominent receipt of the abolitionist movement. Equiano review mainly known to contemporary audiences straighten out his memoir, The Interesting Narrative shambles the Life of Olaudah Equiano, comprise Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written coarse Himself (1789). Chika, who first heard of Equiano when she was cardinal, chose the medium of fiction watchdog explore some of the more individual aspects of Equiano's life, such although his ardent wish to assimilate sting white society or his grief people the death of his white Land wife. As Chika said in book interview with the Flemish channel VRT, even if The Black Messiah deals with a historical figure, its median themes - racism, human trafficking, gift the desire to belong - tricky eminently contemporary concerns.

 

 

Sources

• Bekers, Elisabeth, 'Unigwe, Chika (1974 -    )', in Dictionary slant African Biography, vol. 6, ed. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong & Henry Louis Entrepreneur (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 101-103.
• Chika Unigwe (Official Website). Material quoted from this website beginning the above text is by Daria Tunca.
• 'De zwarte messias', Cobra, 28 May 2013. Chika Unigwe discusses Olaudah Equiano.
• 'An Interview with Chika Unigwe', by Daria Tunca, Vicki Mortimer & Emmanuelle Del Calzo, Wasafiri 75 (Autumn 2013), pp. 54-59.