Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: “Wahala” is a Nigerian pidgin word that means trouble. In Nikki May’s debut novel, Wahala, three female protagonists and longtime friends – Ronke, Simisola, and Bukola – face similar trouble from the same villainous and psychopathic source: Isobel. When Simisola initiates Isobel into the sisterhood, she has no clue that her childhood friend holds a familial grudge against Ronke. Neither is she aware that Isobel’s revenge plan involves destroying their sisterly friendship and marital relationships as collateral damage. While the plot structure of Wahala is analytically open to multiple theoretical frameworks, the novel’s transcontinental setting and the hybrid identities of the protagonists foreground a nuanced dimension of Afrodiasporic studies, namely Afropeanism. As the prefix and suffix suggest, the term Afropean denotes identities of African Europeans or Europeans of African descent. In May’s novel, Ronke, Simisola, Bukola, and Isobel are part-Nigerian and part-European through interracial marriages. I argue that the self-perception and cultural practices of these characters shape their Afropean hybridity in ways that extend the discourse of Afropolitanism and challenge the politics of contingent belonging. I therefore show how Nikki May and her four protagonists belong to an elite class of African immigrants based in European metropolitan cities. Ultimately, this study fills a gap in knowledge about the relationship between Afropolitanism and Afropeanism.
Source: Matatu
Author: Innocent Akili Ngulube
Institution: University of Malawi
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410220100