Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 5

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue V Version I 3 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A A Social Ecological Reading of Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow affected and shaped the life of Zilayefa. He also examines how the displaced male-image in her life shaped her sexual life, as well as the impact of a displaced father figure in her life, the anxieties that come with such absence, and how Zilayefa manages to suppress them. In a broader sense, the study takes into account the roles played by male characters in shaping the life of Zelayefa. He analyzes characters like Papadopoulos, Zilayefa’s runaway father, the Ijaw oil- smuggling boys, General Sani Abacha, Admiral, the management of the oil companies, Uthman Kamal, TT and many others, who have contributed in many dimensions in the composition of this displaced male- image (p. 49). Chukwumah employs Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams to analyse the male-image as a displaced entity, as well as other desires of humans which Jung refers to as collective unconscious (p. 50). He, however, concludes after his analyses of various characters in Yellow Yellow that the image of the male characters projected in the novel bears the mark of the important literary epoch Emenyeonu referred to as the “new voices” of the twenty- first century Nigerian literature. He also notes that the novel significantly undermines the depiction of most of the peculiar environmental problems of the region. He equally blames Zilayefa for most of the woes that befall her, though he does not completely exonerate the displaced male-images in her life (p. 61). Similarly, Nwangwu, Julia Chidinma and Ibiene E. Iboroma (2018) lend their voices in the interpretation of Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow from a psychological perspective. They inquire into the Psychological effects of single parenthood on the children. The study draws from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Walter Wreckless’ control theory in order to understand the effect of single parenthood on the emotional and social behaviour of children within the family unit (p. 23). To achieve this goal, the study compares characters in Yellow Yellow and those in Everything Good Will Come and draw conclusions that despite the presence of a father or a mother in a single parent family, the characters still lack the filial love they deserve and this has a way of affecting them psychologically just like the way the social setting they find themselves in do (p. 32). In a related note, Kayode Omoniyi Ogunfolabi (2019) concerns himself with the pain, trauma, and discrimination suffered by Zelayefa and other mulattoes (Yellows) like her in the novel due to their mixed race. In an article entitled “Biracialism and Trauma in Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow , Ogunfolabi reveals the travels of biracial women in an African society and maintains that as a product of biracial relationships, these women have blurred the racial boundaries and consequently emerges as “the other.” And from his analysis of the text, Ogunfolabi shows that the dialectics of visibility and invisibility produces traumatic experiences on the part of the protagonist. The trauma suffered by the protagonist is also not unrelated to the courage of the writer to rewrite racial exclusivity by privileging a biracial female character (p. 38). The first part of the essay addresses the valorization of racial purity on one hand, and on the other, the vilification of biracial identities through the narratives of Madam George or Sisi. Sisi narrates how she was rejected as a potential daughter in-law because of her ‘unknown’ lineage. Here, her unknown lineage simply alludes to her racial mixture. By this narration, Zilayefa realises that she, Sisi and other biracial women in her society does not fit into the racial codes of their society and are therefore relegated to the margins as others since they are perceived by the larger society as morally weak and sexually promiscuous (p. 41). Valorizing women of mixed race on the other hand, signify physical attraction, and it most often leave them as victims of sexual abuses. This is typical of Sisi, Emem, and Zilayefa’s lives (p. 42). The second part of the article anchors the analysis of the novel on Cathy Caruth’s idea of trauma to establish that the protagonist is a victim of trauma. Zilayefa is often traumatised whenever she looks at her mother. This is because of the fact that she is a complete replica of her mother, Ina Binaebi, and most strikingly because she had similar kind of experiences as her mother in the city of Port Harcourt. Her contact with Sergio reminds her of her father and the trauma that comes with not knowing her father because the man abandoned her mom and her even before she was born. She however tries to unconsciously suppress the feeling of her father’s absence just like her mother who completely avoids talking about Plato, Zilayefa’s father. Ogunfolabi asserts that it was Zilayefa’s desire for fatherly love that draws her closer to Admiral even though it will cost her sexual exploitation (p. 42). Thirdly, the essay shows how the author uses the mulatto characters as a narrative agency to undermine racial purity and supremacy as well as alleviating the suffering or traumatic effect of the ‘other’ (p. 39). The author requites narrative agency to the mixed race characters in order for them to tell their own stories as it affects them, thereby giving them prominence which had hitherto been denied by social discriminations of all sorts against them. Unlike Chukwumah and Ogunfolabi, Olubunmi Ashaolu (2019) articulates her ecofeminist perspectives of the novel more poignantly. She acknowledges the bond and relationship that exists between women and nature as well as the role of women in terms of protecting nature which were born out of the collective oppression, abuse and subjugation of women and nature. The article interrogates the negative effects of male biased power over women and nature, and how the logic of domination amounts to environmental degradation. She explicates this claim by alluding to the destruction of Zilayefa’s mother’s (Bibi) farm by oil spill which is as a result of the activities of human