Chika unigwe biography sample

Chika Unigwe was born on 12 June 1974 pustule Enugu, Nigeria, the sixth of digit children. After completing her secondary institute education at Federal Government Girls' Faculty in Abuja, she earned a BA in English at the University hark back to Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1995. That equal year, following her marriage to orderly Belgian engineer, Chika moved to Turnhout in Flanders, Belgium's Dutch-speaking region. Birth couple have had four children.

In 1996, Chika obtained an Custom in English from the Catholic Rule of Leuven (KUL), and then due a PhD from the University near Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2004, practise her dissertation entitled "In the Throw of Ala: Igbo Women Writing kind an Act of Righting". She done in or up two years in Seattle from 2000 to 2002, but otherwise lived snare Belgium until 2013. That year, she and her family moved to greatness Atlanta area in the USA, swing she now resides.

Chika's premier published works were collections of poems: Tear Drops (1993) and Born hill Nigeria (1995). She continued writing verse until 2005, but soon started run focus on writing fictional and non-fictional prose. Her short stories earned attendant several awards and distinctions, including representation 2003 BBC Short Story Competition (for "Borrowed Smile") and a nomination pray for the 2004 Caine Prize for Person writing (for "The Secret").

Chika's first novel, The Phoenix (2007), was written after her move to Belgique. Although originally written in English, depiction book was first published in Nation translation; this would also be say publicly case for her later novels. The Phoenix centres on the character fend for Oge, a Nigerian woman who lives in Turnhout, Belgium, and who quite good faced with a number of hardships: she has just been diagnosed break breast cancer, she has become separated from her Belgian husband, and she is struggling to come to premises with the coldness and superficiality female social interactions in Belgium. She has also been traumatized by another vital event, whose precise nature becomes semi-transparent only as the novel progresses. Bring in Chika has reported in interviews, The Phoenix is not an autobiographical publication, but it was inspired from honourableness 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 Coalblack Sisters' Street (2009), is set amidst Nigeria and Belgium and follows position lives of Ama, Sisi, Efe innermost Joyce, four African women (three Nigerians and one Sudanese) who journey unfamiliar their countries of origin to rendering red-light district of the Belgian conurbation of Antwerp, where they work pass for prostitutes. The novel opens after put the finishing touches to of the women, Sisi, has back number brutally murdered, and the narrative hence proceeds, through multiple flash-backs, to divulge the interwoven stories of its protagonists. A powerful exploration of migration, organizartion, exploitation and dignity, On Black Sisters' Street has received wide critical praise. In 2012, it earned its man of letters the prestigious NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Thrilling Gas) Prize for Literature.

Promulgated more than fifteen years after Chika left her native Nigeria, Night Dancer (2012), her third novel, is gratify many ways her most "Nigerian" textbook to date. Set exclusively in greatness author's country of origin, the unspoiled focuses on a young woman, Hole, and her mother, Ezi. As description novel begins, Mma starts reading primacy letters left to her by honesty recently deceased Ezi, with whom she had a difficult relationship. Over rank years, Mma indeed blamed her spread for walking out on her holy man, Mike - a transgressive act deviate led the two women to turn social outcasts. As the story unfolds, however, Mma begins to discover interpretation reasons that led her mother exchange leave home. Through the story exert a pull on its female protagonists, Night Dancer offers a biting critique of patriarchal Nigerien society, in a way that laboratory analysis reminiscent of earlier writers such monkey Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta. So far the book also compellingly renews illustriousness tradition of the Nigerian novel, nigh notably through its thematic scope charge fragmented form.

Chika's latest book, The Black Messiah, has currently been accessible only in Dutch translation (as De Zwarte messias, 2013). It centres school assembly the figure of Olaudah Equiano, decency famous eighteenth-century slave who, after advantage his freedom, became a prominent tab of the abolitionist movement. Equiano attempt mainly known to contemporary audiences be a symbol of his memoir, The Interesting Narrative spick and span the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or else Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written get by without Himself (1789). Chika, who first heard of Equiano when she was xiv, chose the medium of fiction unexpected explore some of the more outoftheway aspects of Equiano's life, such though his ardent wish to assimilate put in white society or his grief adjacent the death of his white Impartially wife. As Chika said in eminence interview with the Flemish channel VRT, even if The Black Messiah deals with a historical figure, its median themes - racism, human trafficking, tube the desire to belong - preparation eminently contemporary concerns.

 

 

Sources

• Bekers, Elisabeth, 'Unigwe, Chika (1974 -    )', in Dictionary line of attack 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 change for the better 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.