Bearing Witness through Fantasy: Narrative Voice and Reclamation of Agency in Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Anguish and Anarchy

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of female trauma and the reclamation of agency in Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Anguish and Anarchy (2024) the third installment of the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy. Focusing on the female protagonists, the study interrogates how narrative voice functions as a strategy for articulating the complexities of trauma within a postcolonial context. The paper draws on literary trauma theory, to analyse how fragmented narration and testimonial modes of storytelling bear witness to the enduring psychological and political effects of violence. Simultaneously, strands of feminist theory are deployed to understand how Adeyemi positions her female character voices as sites of resistance, where personal suffering is transformed into collective empowerment. Through a close reading of the text to foreground the intersections between trauma, voice, and agency, the paper argues that the interplay of narrative voice and female solidarity, enables Adeyemi to communicate the silenced histories of oppression and re-imagine the possibilities of female agency in a fractured postcolonial landscape. An array of trauma and postcolonial theoretical tenets and snippets of feminist perspectives are used in textual analysis, to demonstrate how Adeyemi’s narrative strategies challenge dominant structures of power and foreground the resilience of marginalised women.