Narrating Memories: The Non-fictional Context of Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls

Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls has been assessed in various ways by scholars, but not much of critical thrust has been focused on the novel from the non-fictional context to project the prevalent situation of violence, insecurity and terrorism in postmodern, postcolonial Nigeria. This study examines memories as narrative informant and backdrop to the historical reality in Habila’s The Chibok Girls. The work thus examines the story from the perspective of form and content as nonfiction account. The paper reveals that Habila is intentional in adopting strategies such as real events, places and people, point of view, dialogues and tone to establish The Chibok Girls in the genre of creative nonfiction. The stream of thought of the narrative is interwoven with the portrayed historical reality which is expressed organically and holistically as narrative of a nation that is ill at ease and sorely grappling to realise its true nationhood. The study thus concludes that while history can be fictionalized, memories could be used as the tool for the recalibration of history purposefully intended to constantly remind of the recent past as well as to inform on the direction to a better future for humanity

Keywords: Memories Chibok Girls Creative Non-Fiction Habila Postcolonial Nigeria

Author

• Wandama Wadinga
  Department of English, Faculty of Arts,
  Modibbo Adama University
  Yola, Adamawa State
  wandadinga@gmail.com