HOAYS: Part 2, Late Sixties

[Melissa_W Moderator]

Please use this thread for discussion of Part 2 of Half of a Yellow Sun.

[Fozzie]

The references to tumultuous weeks before Baby’s birth, of a quarrel involving Odenigbo, Olanna, and Rickard, made me wonder what had happened.  I wondered when we would find out.  That curiosity kept me going through the horrors of the war described in this section.

The Igbo people were in denial about the brutality taking place against their people.  This doesn’t seem to be uncommon in history.  Often, when an ethnic group is being persecuted, members of the group physically removed from the persecution think it won’t happen to them.  Yet, it does.

 By the way, the name Baby annoyed me.  Give her a real name, I kept thinking to myself!

[Peppermill]

Fozzie wrote:

The references to tumultuous weeks before Baby’s birth, of a quarrel involving Odenigbo, Olanna, and Rickard, made me wonder what had happened.  I wondered when we would find out.  That curiosity kept me going through the horrors of the war described in this section.

The shift in time scales to go back and tell this story disconcerted me.  Like you, curiosity did keep me reading.  I don't know that I have encountered a time shift quite like the one Adichie used to take us back and tell us Chiamaka's (Baby's) story.  In all, I was not displeased with the technique.  (It did remind me a bit of Bruce Marchart's The Wake of Forgiveness, and I do remember at the time we read that for First Look, I had recently read something else with a time shift.  I wondered then if time shifting was a technique being taught in au courant writing courses.)

The Igbo people were in denial about the brutality taking place against their people.  This doesn’t seem to be uncommon in history.  Often, when an ethnic group is being persecuted, members of the group physically removed from the persecution think it won’t happen to them.  Yet, it does.

Is that true only of ethnic groups?  Don't people often just try to deny until pushed up against the wall, whether POWs (just finished Unbroken) or women or .....?

 By the way, the name Baby annoyed me.  Give her a real name, I kept thinking to myself!

Kainene agreed with you!  (A later section.) She did have one; Chiamaka,  I believe it was.  Have any guess as to why Adichie did that -- to keep very clear to Western readers who she was?  To isolate her from the community in a story where virtually everyone had a name?  To.... ???

[Fozzie]

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Peppermill wrote:

Kainene agreed with you!  (A later section.) She did have one; Chiamaka,  I believe it was.  Have any guess as to why Adichie did that -- to keep very clear to Western readers who she was?  To isolate her from the community in a story where virtually everyone had a name?  To.... ???

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Yes, I remember that Baby did have a real name.  I don't know why the suthor did that, but I think Olanna might have called her Baby because she viewed her "stewardship" of Baby to be temporary.  There was some talk of Baby going back to her real mother later in her life.

[Fozzie]

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Peppermill wrote:

The shift in time scales to go back and tell this story disconcerted me.  Like you, curiosity did keep me reading.  I don't know that I have encountered a time shift quite like the one Adichie used to take us back and tell us Chiamaka's (Baby's) story.  In all, I was not displeased with the technique.  (It did remind me a bit of Bruce Marchart's The Wake of Forgiveness, and I do remember at the time we read that for First Look, I had recently read something else with a time shift.  I wondered then if time shifting was a technique being taught in au courant writing courses.)

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It seems I have read lots of book with time shifts, so I don't think too much of it anymore.  I do read a lot of relatively new literary fiction, so maybe it is "the technique to use" right now.

[chadadanielleKR]

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Fozzie wrote:

The references to tumultuous weeks before Baby’s birth, of a quarrel involving Odenigbo, Olanna, and Rickard, made me wonder what had happened.  I wondered when we would find out.  That curiosity kept me going through the horrors of the war described in this section.

 

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I had the same thought. I kept wondering what had happened. I just thought that the Author wanted to develop each thread of the story; one after the other instead of telling what happened to everyone at the same time. And since there are so many characters it might make each individual story more easy to understand...