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Cultural Displacement, Hybridity and Postcolonial Mimicry 
in Selected Nigerian Migration Fiction

Amarachi Christiana Kelechi-Ejingini
Department of Humanities, Federal Polytechnic Nekede, 

Owerri, Imo State
Phone Number: 07035213478

E-Mail Address:lovelyamara106@gmail

Abstract 
Several postcolonial migration narratives reveal that the pressing 
need to subsist in a new environment predisposes the African 
immigrant to changes which affect almost every aspect of life. 
Such changes may entail adopting a lifestyle of mimicry in order 
to fit into the mores of the host society. The result of this scenario 
can be a mindful or unconscious loss of the individual's native 
values and the prevalence of the foreign values. Thus, the migrant 
may become a product of neither his native world nor that of his 
new world, and the struggle to maintain both values 
simultaneously may create what most literary critics explain as 
hybridity. This research adopts the postcolonial theory in studying 
the traces and results of mimicry, cultural displacement and 
hybridity as it affects the migrant characters depicted in Micheal 
Afenfia's Leave My Bones in Saskatoon, Helon Habila's Travelers, 
Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah and Chika Unigwe's On 
Black Sisters' Street; all of which are migration novels written by 
postcolonial Nigerian authors. The research argues that even in a 
foreign abode, the migrants should endeavor to uphold their native 
culture because this is a sure way of maintaining a balanced 
identity while they are abroad and even when they eventually 
return home. 

Keywords: Postcolonialism, mimicry, cultural displacement, 
cultural assimilation and hybridity. 

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and Postcolonial Mimicry in Selected Nigerian Migration Fiction

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Introduction
The tendency to tilt one's mores towards those of the host has been 

st
observed to characterize the 21  century African migrants. In most 
cases, it is regarded by the migrant as a profitable strategy for 
surviving the downsides of migration experience but at some 
points in the individual's migration ventures, a complete return to 
the initial values may become difficult or even impossible. These 
cases produce an individual who eventually is neither home to his 
nativity nor to his host society.  Even in cases of physical return to 
the migrant's homeland, the struggle to return to or maintain the 
former native norms creates a sense of unhomeliness in the 
individual.

 Postcolonial literature has been explained in diverse ways 
by critics. Some regard it as a literature which analyses the 
experiences of formerly colonized people or societies even after 
the exit of the colonizers. For Ann Dobie, postcolonial literature is 
the literature written in English by people in formerly colonized 
countries, some of it authored by the colonizers and their 
descendants, but more of it by those they colonized. The subject 
matter of postcolonial literature is marked by its concern for 
ambiguity or loss of identity. Written by culturally displaced 
people, it investigates the clash of cultures in which one deems 
itself to be superior and imposes its own practices on the less 
powerful one (Theory into Practice, 207).

 The migration texts chosen for this work underscore the 
experiences of migrant characters who suffer physical, identity 
and cultural displacement as a result of their relocation to 
countries in Europe and America; where almost everything about 
them is deemed immaterial by their host society. Thus, the values 
of the host are imposed on them, plunging them into assimilating 
those of the seemingly powerful ones.  

 Helon Habila's Travelers tells the story of characters 
whose migration from African countries to places like Berlin, 

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United Kingdom, America as well as their encounters with the 
natives of such countries change their whole notion of their 
original African culture. These characters like the unnamed 
narrator who hails from Nigeria, Gina his wife who is an 
American, Mark who is a Malawian and the others from Burkina 
Faso and so on are representatives of the African continent. Their 
reasons for migrating from their homeland to the foreign countries 
include insecurity, the need for a better standard of education, 
harsh economic conditions and many others. These factors reveal 
the prevailing effects of colonialism on their societies even in a 
postcolonial era.  

 Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street narrates the 
anxieties of characters from African countries like Nigeria, 
Liberia and Uganda, who encounter such incidents as poverty, 
sexual exploitation, unemployment and other problems in their 
postcolonial societies. These predicaments influence their 
decisions to migrate to Belgium. However, their mingling with 
people in Belgium leads to their assimilation of the foreign ways 
of life at the expense of their native norms. Chimamanda Adichie's 
Americanah reveals the failures of the Nigerian postcolonial 
society which are products of the colonial legacies. Thus, such 
issues as unemployment, decline in the nation's standard of 
education, financial difficulties and so many others become 
reasons for which the major characters migrate to America. In 
their new abode, they face various forms of displacement and new 
forms of colonialism from the natives of their host country. 
Micheal Afenfia's Leave MyBones in Saskatoon depicts the 
miserable conditions of individuals in a postcolonial Nigerian 
society for which they migrate to Canada.  Owoicho the 
protagonist suffers the sad realities of insecurity in Nigeria, in 
which his wife and three children are killed on the same day. For 
other characters like Damiete, Bimpe, Oroma, and Obinna; 
unemployment, a failing education standard and financial 
difficulties rouse their desire to leave Nigeria. While they live in 
Saskatoon, these migrant characters in the novel get exposed to 

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displacements for which most of them become a hybridized 
version of their original self.
 
 It is remarkable that the writers of these four novels 
underscore similar issues which reoccur in different decades after 
the exit of the colonialists from various African countries. These 
issues expose the failures of most postcolonial African societies 
for which individuals feel frustrated and prefer to engage in 
transnational migration. Shockingly, their target destinations are 
countries of those who once colonized and marginalized them in 
diverse ways. Furthermore, their relocation to such places make 
them vulnerable to more instances of marginalization under which 
they have no other option than to forfeit their real worth in order to 
survive.

 It is based on these considerations that the postcolonial 
theory has been adopted as a framework for this research paper. 
The postcolonial theory according to Pourjafari Fatemeh and 
Abdolali Vahidpour, 'has its roots in the frustrations of the 
colonized and tensions and clashes between their culture and that 
of the dominant group. It also deals with the oppressed group's 
fears, hope and desires for their future and their own identities, and 
by regarding them as individuals worthy enough to be discussed 
and talked about, it gives them the authority and political and 
cultural freedom to gain independence by overcoming political 
dominance (The Dawn Journal, 683). These frustrations, tensions 
and clashes between the cultures are often divulged by various 
postcolonial literature with the issue of migration forming their 
major focus.

Mitchell Philip Irving explains that the term postcolonialism is:
broadly a study of the effects of colonialism on 
cultures and societies. It is concerned with both how 
European nations conquered and controlled “Third 
World” cultures and how these groups have since 
responded to and resisted those encroachments. 

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Postcolonialism, which is both a body of theory and a 
study of political and cultural change, has gone and 
continues to go through three broad stages: a) initial 
awareness of the social, psychological, and cultural 
inferiority enforced by being in a colonized state; the 
struggle for ethnic, cultural, and political autonomy; 
and a growing awareness of cultural overlap and 
hybridity (1).

 The stages of postcolonialism which are highlighted by 
Irving confirm the earlier assertion that the unpleasant 
experiences of people in most societies after the colonial era lure 
them into the delusion that life outside their homeland is more 
palatable. However, some of them discover that such notion is a 
mirage as they arrive their host destinations and are treated as 
inferior beings. As such, they begin to feel displaced and 
unaccepted in such abodes. They therefore, tend to mimic the 
seemingly superior culture of their hosts. Based on this premise, 
one can state that mimicry, cultural displacement, hybridity and 
unhomeliness are common concepts which are associated with the 
experiences of postcolonial African migrants.

Mimicry 
 Mimicry is a notable concept which draws the attention of 
many critics of migration literature, especially as it relates to the 
postcolonial factors which surround or influence migration. 
Mimicry in colonial and postcolonial literature is most commonly 
seen when members of a colonized society imitate the language, 
dress, politics, or cultural attitude of their colonizers (say, British 
or the French). In the context of immigration, mimicry is seen as 
an opportunistic pattern of behavior: one copies the person in 
power, because one hopes to have access to that same power 
oneself. Presumably, while copying the master, one has to 
intentionally suppress one's own cultural identity, though in some 
cases, immigrants and colonial subjects are left with a dominant 
foreign culture that there may not be a clear preexistent identity to 

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suppress (Amardeen Singh, 3). 

 In another sense, Ann Dobie posits that: “colonial subjects 
practice mimicry-imitation of dress, language, behavior, and even 
gestures instead of resistance” (208). In the light of the migration 
narratives under study, most of the characters tend to imitate the 
lifestyles and norms of the people they meet in their new 
environment, even when such norms negate those of their native 
countries. In Adichie's Americanah, Ifemelu one of the major 
characters begins to enjoy different types of drinks just like her 
boyfriend Curt. She does this in order to play along and maintain 
her relationship with the American companion even while her 
conscience reminds her that such practice negates her moral 
standard:

With Kurt, she became, in her mind, a woman free 
of knots and cares, a woman running in the rain 
with the taste of sun-warmed strawberries in her 
mouth. “A drink” became part of the architecture 
of her life, mojitos and martinis, dry whites and 
fruity reds. She went hiking with him, kayaking, 
camping near his family's vacation home, all 
things she would never have imagined herself 
doing before. She was lighter and leaner; she was 
Curt's Girlfriend, a role she slipped into as into a 
favorite, flattering dress, she laughed more 
because he laughed so much. His optimism 
blinded her. (229)

 Furthermore, other characters like Bartholomew and 
Ginika get so  engrossed in mimicking the white skin that they 
consider their black skin unacceptable. So, they engage in 
bleaching their skin. This creates a strong dislike in Ifemelu 
towards Bartholomew, so she expresses her disgust to Aunty Uju 
in the novel: “He uses bleaching creams” couldn't you see? His 
face is a funny color. He must be using the cheap ones with no 
sunscreen. What kind of man bleaches his skin, biko?” (140).

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In Helon Habila's Travelers, theunnamed protagonist who is also 
the narrator in the novel marries an American artist named Gina, 
and they move to Berlin in Germany where she applies for her 
Zimmer art Fellowship and attends art competitions. But as Gina 
loses her seven months old pregnancy, their sweet marriage 
suddenly turns pale, boring and full of loneliness. Thus, the 
narrator resorts to hanging out with fellow Africans at different 
parts of Berlin and this exposes him to a life of mimicry. He, 
confesses his new lifestyle:
                     I had met others like them here in Berlin, at readings, 

on the train, young men and women, in threadbare 
sweaters and tattered jeans, mostly living in 
communes in abandoned buildings, purveyors of an 
alternative way of life, often not agreeing on what 
exactly that alternative should be, just an alternative 
status quo, otherwise what was the point? I drank, 
and smoked and listened… Even in my tipsy, sedated 
state, I sensed how ephemeral this moment was (13).

       The narrator's mimicry is not just an imitation of the 
lives or values of the natives of his new abode, it is 
also a survival strategy in the midst of some 
u n w e l c o m e  c h a n g e s  w h i c h  m a k e  h i m 
uncomfortable. He confesses these earlier challenges 
which lure him into mimicking the lifestyle of the 
other migrants: 

          But we got married, and it was a good marriage, 
stable, we had our routines, like most married people, 
we woke up together, we went to work, … Two 
months after our marriage, Gina got pregnant. We 
hadn't planned on that, and we certainly hadn't 
foreseen losing the pregnancy after just seven 
months. Devastating for both of us, but something 
shifted in Gina. She stopped going out; she cried all 
day; she stopped eating. Gina was sleeping all 
day–she wouldn't wake up till late afternoon when 

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she'd emerge looking drawn and ethereal only to grab 
a sandwich from the fridge. I was left alone to 
stumble from place to place, mostly art galleries and 
libraries. (8-9).

 The narrator begins to engage in the activities of those with 
whom he spends more time, even though these are not his original 
lifestyle. 

 For some characters in Afenfia's own novel, mimicry 
becomes a means of blending in a new and somewhat 
unwelcoming environment. For this reason, Bimpe who is one of 
the characters chooses a name which will suit the Canadian accent 
without being mindful of the distortion it brings to her original 
name and its meaning. The novel reveals her bold declaration of 
what she gains by distorting her real name:

All I'm saying is that Bree is a simple, sweet name 
that gets me into places Oluwabimipe cannot. Bree 
good, Bimpe bad. You get? Bimpe mimicked 
something she saw on TV a while back, even 
though she couldn't remember who exactly made 
the hilarious remark (158).  

 Oroma, another Nigerian migrant character in the same 
novel mimics the Canadian style of expressing or showing 
unusual fondness for pets. So, she suddenly develops an unusual 
fondness for dogs. She does this to the point that getting two dogs 
becomes part of the items in her wish list. She frankly expresses 
these wishes to Owoicho who visits her apartment:

But you know what I would really, really like? 
Someday, when I'm qualified for mortgage, I want 
to have my own house in a nicer neighborhood. A 
three-bedroom duplex with lots of space, a garage, 
a garden for flowers and vegetables, and a packet 
fence, including two Bolognese dogs. Two dogs. 
Yes. One white and one black. I would name the 

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black one white and the white one black (240-41).
This description by Oroma simply displays the extent to which 
many African migrants mimic the choices and ventures of their 
host societies even if it contradicts what is obtainable in their 
native land. A character like Owoicho sees this as absolutely 
unimaginable when assessed through his normal African values. 
Thus, as Owoicho refers to that as “the craziest thing I have heard 
all week”, asking whether Oroma “has turned full Canadian”; 
Oroma's only response is “I dey tell you. One hundred percent 
Canadian” (241). Oroma's response to the issue of mimicking the 
Canadian way of life is as flimsy as that of Bimpe. In response to 
Ochanya's questions as to why she feels like Bimpe is not a good 
name in a new country, Bimpe answers: 

I don't have an answer to that question Ochanya. 
But don't worry, shebi you'll start school here, and 
your dad too will be going out to look for work, 
abi? When that time comes, you'll know how 
important it is that Canadians can pronounce your 
names easily, or better still, that you have English 
names that can at least open the door for you until 
you walk in and they realize you're not white like 
them but Black (158). 
 

 This response suggests the rate of baseless imitation of the 
Western lifestyle to which most African migrants succumb in the 
postcolonial age, just in the pretext of maintaining a comfortable 
stay abroad.  
Stressing on the details portrayed in most migration narratives, 
Kosmalga avers that:
                     Migration writing gives highly informative accounts 

of migration experience, exposes the stereotypical 
representations of migrants, gives piercing insights 
into migrants' host and home cultures, explores the 
issues of identity, nationality, borders and 
belonging, provides alternative about current social 
and cultural transformations. (331-32). 

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          One may analyze the assertion above by stating that most 
writings on the subject of migration often search through the entire 
initial principles of the migrants before they engage in migration, 
their experiences with others during migration as well as how 
these reflect on the migrants' personalities after their encounter 
with their host locations. All of these are vividly illustrated in the 
novels being used in this research.

Cultural Assimilation and Migration Experiences 
           Most likely, migrants' thought patterns may change as they 
mingle with individuals in their host countries. Consequently, 
most of these migrants may relinquish some aspects of their native 
culture so as to assimilate those of their new abode. They may do 
this voluntarily or under pressure. Frantz Fanon explains that, “the 
inferiority complex created in black people who have accepted the 
culture of another country as their own will cause them to imitate 
the codes of their colonizers” (209). In this sense therefore, the 
concept of cultural assimilation is strongly linked to the subject of 
migration and is portrayed in the experiences of characters in 
migration writings. It is seen as “the process in which a minority 
group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or 
assimilates the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group 
whether fully or partially. (Wikipedia, 1). 

        In Habila's Travelers, a character like Manu relinquishes his 
African culture of protecting children from looking at the nudity 
of an adult opposite sex. Having travelled to Berlin where the new 
culture attaches little or no value to people's nudity, Manu freely 
allows his daughter to look at the naked man on the sign post. The 
narrator reveals:
                      As they get off the train, they face a billboard with a 

completely naked man seated on a stool, leering 
into the camera, his crotch barely covered by his 
hands clasped over it. A few months ago, Manu 
would have stepped in front of his daughter to 
block her view, but now he simply turns his gaze 

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away. It is a new world, another culture. She'll get 
inured to it. (54)

  In Adichie's Americanah, cultural assimilation is so 
rampant among the Nigerian characters who migrate and reside in 
America that the marriage institution is grossly affected by 
numerous cases of divorce in such country.  Based on this, one of 
the characters who is an Igbo accountant in Massachusetts 
observes that, “Igbo women came to America and became wild. 
This was an unpleasant truth but one that had to be said. What else 
accounted for the high divorce rates among Nigerians in America 
and the low rates among Nigerians in Nigeria?” (139). In the same 
vein, Afenfia's Leave My Bones in Saskatoon illustrates Bimpe's 
assimilation of the western cultural standards in marriage affairs. 
Therefore, in a conflict with her husband, Bimpe does not seek a 
polite or peaceful way of settling issues with Damiete as she 
should have done based on the African culture rather, she resorts to 
abusiveness and threatens to call the cops on him as it is done in the 
western culture. She abuses him thus: “Useless man. Liar. If you 
continue with these lies, I will call the cops on you again. You 
think this is Nigeria? We are in Canada, and I will deal with you. I 
will make sure you sleep on the street this night” (261).

 On the aspect of parenting styles and how the cultural 
ways of child upbringing in the Western world are being 
assimilated by Nigerian parents abroad, another character in the 
novel who lives in United Kingdom remarks, 'I was just thinking 
that Nigerians here really forgive too much from their children 
because they have foreign accents. The rules are different' (280). 
The fear of not belonging to a particular group makes people 
experience a cultural crisis and adopt the culture around them and 
claim it as a part of their own culture. This phenomenon happens 
because people who grow up with two different cultures cannot 
determine which culture belong to them and end up adopting these 
two cultures as theirs (Yolanda Viviani and Robby Satria, 2). 

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 This very issue reflects in the way Aunty Uju responds to 
her son's disrespectful remarks on her appearance in the novel. 
Thus, Dike boldly tells her; 'Mum, you look ridiculous' (189), and 
she sees nothing wrong with that even when such a remark from a 
child should have earned him a punishment in the Nigerian 
context. In addition, the same Auty Uju further exhibits her 
adoption of the American culture as against her native Nigerian 
culture by opting that Ifemelu calls her by her first and not attach 
any special title to her name, she even instructs Ifemelu to avoid 
speaking Igbo language which is her native language to her son 
Dike: “Don't speak Igbo to him, two languages will confuse him” 
((131). 

 Afenfia in his own novel portrays another instance of 
cultural assimilation by Nigerians who live in Canada through the 
discussion between his characters; Owoicho and Bimpe. As 
Owoicho attempts to punish his daughter for trying to expose her 
nudity to a boy in Nigeria, Bimpe advises him: 

In fact, the worst thing you can do here is touch a 
child or dare get physical with even your own 
pikin. You may land yourself in a big problem. You 
can't hit her or scream at her or something like that. 
Here, you talk to them. It is called negotiating. You 
have a conversation (218). 

 These remarks from Bimpe depicts the extent to which she 
abandons her original African culture which endorses discipline 
as an essential aspect of child upbringing, and how she prefers the 
foreign style just because she lives in Canada.

 Unigwe's novel illustrates this state of cultural 
assimilation in the attitude of the three migrant characters; Ama, 
Efe, and Joyce in Antwerp, Belgium. At the strange disappearance 
and suspected death of their colleague, Sisi; they choose to mourn 
her in a very silent manner, even though they feel emotionally 
depressed by such incidence. The narrator reveals Efe's thoughts 
about how they should respond to Sisi's demise, comparing the 

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absence of sympathizers in their apartment in Antwerp to what 
would have happened if they are in Nigeria: 

It is not appropriate that they should talk about 
food when they are supposed to be grieving. The 
sorrow is supposed to take away your appetite, 
take precedence over food. It would be unseemly 
for one of them to go to the kitchen and start 
cooking. Even Madam seems to understand this, 
so she did not bother to ask any of them to cook 
before she left. Back home in Nigeria, neighbors 
would have gathered to cry with us. Nobody will 
let you cry alone! Here, their grief has to be 
contained within the four walls of their flat. No 
matter how large it becomes for them, they must 
not let it crack the walls (54). 

Hybridity
This is another concept which is connected to migration literature 
just as the ones in this paper. In explaining this concept, Dobie 
states that; “Interaction of cultures creates blended ones, mixture 
of the native and colonial, a process called hybridity or 
syncretism. Characterized by tensions and change, this process is 
dynamic, interactive and creative” (208). Characters depicted in 
the selected texts exhibit traits which are products of their 
interaction with other cultures.

 Habila's protagonist who is also the narrator begins to 
change his relationship pattern and communication with his 
people back in Nigeria. This can be traced to his marriage with 
Gina, an American lady who does not even communicate with her 
own people while they both reside in Berlin.  The narrator 
complains:

I haven't spoken to my mother in a while. When I 
first came to America, I used to call every Sunday, 
talking through five-dollar call card, the phone 
being passed from her to my father, to my sister 

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and Postcolonial Mimicry in Selected Nigerian Migration Fiction

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and my two brothers. The plan was for me to 
return after my Ph.D, but then I met Gina, and 
days turned into months, and the months into 
years, and then I stopped calling home. (35)

For the narrator, Gina his wife becomes a symbol of his interaction 
with a foreign culture, a reason he becomes a hybrid. Thus, his 
bond with his people back home and the fondness he had for 
maintaining a regular communication with them gradually fades.  
Also, Mark in Habila's work becomes a smoker just as a result of 
his contact with the lifestyles of the people he meets in Berlin. 
Although he has been the child of a clergyman throughout his 
childhood, the migration experience and encounters change his 
lifestyle to a wild personality, even to a transgender. Even though 
he is formerly known as Mary Chinomba and as a girl, the 
encounter with foreign environment and individuals makes him 
choose to become a male, with the name 'Mark'.

 In Adichie's work, a character like Ifemelu experiences the 
tensions and changes produced by hybridity according to Dobie's 
definition. Ifemelu's interaction with people in America plunges 
her into applying relaxer on her hair and she eventually becomes a 
mixture of her original self and a strange one in appearance. First, 
Wambui explains to her the forms of tension which are linked to 
her hybrid state:

Relaxing your is like being in prison. You're caged 
in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go out with Curt 
today because you don't want to sweat out this 
straightness. That picture you sent me, you had 
your hair covered in the boat. You're always 
battling to make your hair do what it isn't meant to 
do. If you go natural and take good care of your 
hair, it won't fall off like it's doing now. I can help 
you cut it right now. No need to think about it too 
much (242).

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 Consequently, she begins to suffer emotional discontent 
and laments as she looks at her hybrid facial look: “I look so ugly, I 
am scared of myself” (242). Adichie further presents characters 
like the returnees in Lagos whom Ranyinudo who is another 
character in the novel complains of that: “Every day, you see them 
carrying bottles of water as if they will die of heat if they are not 
drinking water every minute” (25).  These characters have 
become so hybridized by the American lifestyle of being allergic 
to heat that even when they return to Nigeria which is their native 
country, they still fail to come to terms with realities of the weather 
in their home country. 

 Furthermore, Joel Kuortti throws more light on the 
concept of hybridity, asserting that “as one of the most recurrent 
concepts in postcolonial literature, hybridity represents itself in 
the contact zones between the colonized and the colonizer and 
their mutual interdependence (“Hybridity in Postcolonial Literary 
Contexts”, 2023). Afenfia's own novel shows a character like 
Jason, whose hybrid nature is a product of his change of 
environment or contact with the Canadian ways of life. And so, his 
taste for the native black pepper which his mother Bimpe uses to 
cook while they were in Nigeria changes. Having been asked 
whether he was like that in Nigeria, his parents disclose his real 
state of hybridity: “You know these Nigerian-Canadian children, 
they only want to eat cheese and burger… I can't cook with our 
local pepper anymore because of his allergies. In Nigeria, he ate 
everything and anything. These allergies started when we got 
here” (163). 

 Similar instances of hybridity are seen in Unigwe's 
narrative, a character like Madam becomes a smoker just because 
of her relocation to Antwerp. But she confesses that she never 
engaged in such lifestyle while in Nigeria. In her confession to Sisi 
who rejects her offer of a stick of cigarette, she remarks: “I didn't 
before I came here. But this is a different world. This place 
changes you. You learn to eat corn flakes with cold milk. Can you 

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imagine? They clear the head, cigarettes” (66). Having become a 
hybrid of two cultures, Madam who never tested cigarettes before 
migrating to Antwerp does not only smoke cigarettes, she now 
recommends it for people.

Conclusion
 It is obvious that migration experience is usually 
accompanied by changes for which the original emotional, 
physical, economic and even cultural conditions of the individual 
apparently shift from what they were before ever the migration 
decision and relocation were made. These are issues highlighted 
by the migration novels in this work, such vicissitudes of 
migration are therefore exhibited in such concepts as mimicry, 
hybridity, unhomeliness and cultural assimilation, which in 
diverse ways characterize the postcolonial experiences of African 
migrants outside the African soil. A major point to note is that 
these experiences notify the African migrant of the prevailing 
nature of a masked form of colonialism even in a postcolonial age. 

	 Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda. N. Americanah. Lagos: Farafina, 2013.
 
Afenfia, Micheal. Leave My Bones in Saskatoon. Canada: Griots 

Lounge, 2023. 

Asika, Ikechukwu, Ifechelobi, Jane and Akabuike, Ifeoma. 
“Words Made Flesh” A Formalist Reading of Helon 
Habila's Waiting for an Angel.” International Journal of 
English Literature and Culture. Volume 3 (4), April, 2015. 
pp 96- 106. 

Bhabha, Homi. K. Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.       

Dobie, Ann. Theory in Practice an Introduction to Literary 
Criticism. U.S.A:  Wadsworth, 2012.

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