Youth Edginess as an Indignant Outcry for Environmental Justice: A Postcolonial Ecocritical Analysis of Chimeka Garricks’ Tomorrow Died Yesterday and Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55595/n07zyg24Keywords:
Eco-critical analysis, environmental justice, kidnapping, oil exploitation, vandalism, youth indignationAbstract
This study deals with the plight of the youth in Chimeka Garricks’ Tomorrow Died Yesterday and Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were. Drawing essentially from the postcolonial eco-critical theory by Huggan and Tiffin, it aims to show how young people, in the novels under consideration, show their outrage and fight for environmental justice and restoration. A peruse of both narratives unveils that oil pollution, environmental damages, as well as the chaos engendered by ecological mismanagement, have obviously instigated the resentment of young people, who, showing ‘symptom’ of edginess, no longer hesitate step from indignation to vandalism as a means of last resort to change the status quo. As a final assessment, this paper suggests that western neo-colonial corporations, with governments’ complicity, constitute the real culprits of ecological damages in Africa, this motivates African writers like Chimeka Garricks and Imbolo Mbue to get involved in decrying these awful practices and resorting to eco-activism in their literary fresco to take a step towards sustainable development.
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