Half of A Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half a Yellow Sun CRP.pdf


Half of a Yellow Sun is set during the tumultuous period of the 1960s during a civil war in Nigeria, also known as the Biafran War. The two central characters are twin sisters from a wealthy family, Olanna and Kainene. Each sister chooses a very different path; Olanna marries a revolutionary professor named Odenigbo and moves to a remote university town where they preach radical change, and Kainene chooses a business career and a shy Englishman, Richard, as her husband. As the terror, violence and death of the war move in around them, this captivating and complex narrative explores the failures of humanity and the strength of family amidst the destructive and devastating consequences of war.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a award-winning Nigerian author who is known for her fiction (Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, The Thing Around Your Neck), non-fiction (We Should All Be Feminists, Letter to Ijeawele) and her TED talks (The Danger of a Single Story, We Should All Be Feminists).

Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

Curriculum Connections

Reading: Reading for Meaning (Demonstrating Understanding of Content) Develop a character profile of one of the main characters and provide supporting evidence that demonstrates the scope and changes to the character.

Writing: Developing and Organizing Content(Research) Pairs well with the Oral Communication task. Ask students to research a current (or historical) secessionist movement including the motivations and, when appropriate, the outcome.

Oral Communication: Speaking to Communicate (Purpose) Develop an informative oral presentation about one of the current secessionist struggles in the world and compare it to the struggle for Igbo independence (Biafra).

Media: Creating Media Texts (Producing Media Texts) Ask students in small groups to work with the podcast program Spreaker to produce podcasts in small groups devoted to discussing the impact of war, supported by research and supplemented by their own experiences and opinions.

Essential Questions

War

What are the complexities that accompany a civil war that may not exist in other wars? Does the end always justify the means? Can war ever result in a “winner”? What foreshadowing, particularly with Olanna and Odenigbo, is present to indicate the coming war? What responsibility should colonial powers take for the consequences of their rule, particularly in regards to drawing geographical lines that disregard the complexity of the cultures and ethnicities within these borders?

Family

Is it more important to be loyal to your family or to your personal belief system? Are there any actions that would justify disowning a family member? Should Kainene have forgiven Olanna for her affair with Richard?

Class and Privilege

Does Odenigbo’s treatment of Ugwu, his houseboy, strengthen or weaken his position as a “moral” character? Does Odenigbo’s rape of Amala, orchestrated by his mother, change your perception of him as an intellectual? Why does Amala agree to the set up? How does poverty relate to power? Why is power often expressed via sexual assault? Does the wealth and privilege of Olanna and Kainene make them less credible as revolutionaries during the war? How do notions of power and privilege change as the war worsens? Does Olanna’s response to their living conditions in the refugee camp reflect her privileged upbringing? In what sense is privilege a matter of circumstance?

Feminism

Why do both Olanna and Kainene resist marriage despite it being a social norm? Why does Olanna agree to marry Odenigbo only after the devastation of war significantly changes their social station? How does Richard’s role as a Westerner influence his relationship with Kainene? Why does Mama have the expectations of a wife for Odenigbo that she does? How does the wealth and privilege of the sisters impact their ability to fight against social norms such as expectations of women?

Key Quotations

Ugwu’s despair at the prospect of being turned out by his “master,” Odenigbo: “...he would cook a stew with it, and offer Maser some with rice, and afterward plead with him. Please don’t send me back home, sah. I will work extra for the burned sock. I will earn the money to replace it.” (19).

Olanna’s encounter with a bigoted man in an airport: “”If only he knew how his prejudice had filled her with possibility. She did not have to be the wounded woman whose man had slept with a village girl. She could be a Fulani woman on a plane deriding Igbo people with a good-looking stranger. She could be a woman taking charge of her own life. She could be anything” (284).

Olanna grieving her previous, privileged life: “His eyes saw the future. And so she did not tell him that she grieved for the past, different things on different days, her tablecloths with the silver embroidery, her car, Baby’s strawberry cream biscuits” (328-329).

Relying on a relief centre as a refugee: “ A large crowd had gathered outside. Olanna stood awkwardly among the men and women and children, who all seemed used to standing and waiting for a rusted iron gate to be opened so they could go in and be given goods donated by foreign strangers. She felt discomfited. She felt as if she were doing some improper, unethical; expecting to get food in exchange for nothing” (335).

Famine and starvation: “But the soil was parched. The harmattan cracked lips and feet. Three children died in one day. Father Marcel said Mass without Holy Communion….Flies flew over the sores on children’s bodies. Bedbugs and kwalikwata crawled; women would untie their wrappers to reveal an ugly rash of reddened bites around their waists, like hives steeped in blood” (488-489).

Trigger Warnings

“The purpose of trigger warnings is not to cause students to avoid traumatic content, but to prepare them for it, and in extreme circumstances to provide alternate modes of learning” Lockhart

  • Death (Explicit)
  • Extreme Violence
Trauma Informed Practice A Coffey 2017.docx.pdf

Text to Self Connection

  • How much is your sense of identity informed by your family? By your religion? By your nationality?
  • What decisions were made by the characters that you would have made differently? Why did they make the decisions they did and why would you make a different decision?

Text to Text Connection

Literary Connections

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1964)

Interviews- Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & Onyeka Onwenu

Half of a Yellow Sun (2013) Trailer

Text to World Connections

Potential Strategy from Mini Lessons for Literature Circles

Potential Strategy from Mini-Lessons from Literature Circles

Looking at Characterization (210)

In particular, ask students to focus on the changes in Odenigbo (before the birth of baby; during their stay at the refugee camp; after the death of his mother), Olanna (shortly after she moves in with Odenigbo; after she meets Mama; after the move to the refugee camps) and Ugwu (during his initial employ with Odenigbo; during the beginning of the civil war; after his capture).