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ABSTRACT
Writings on oil exploration activities by multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria have focused mainly on the despoiled environment and its alienating implications for the people of the area. Not much has been done to highlight the erosion of the sacred essence of women in the area and its consequence vis-à-vis their Otherness. This essay examines Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow to posit that 'womanity' (the sacred essence of woman) and humanity founded on autonomous female care for the environment are devalued, alongside ecological degradation, by the activities of the oil multinationals. The devaluation of Delta women pushes her further down the abyss of Otherness. Ecofeminism is employed in establishing the argument of this essay. Of central significance is education as a means of reconstructing Otherness and securing a future for Delta women.
YELLOW-YELLOW IS KAIN EAGARY'S DEBUT WORK. Until the novel earned her a space in the literary world, she was little-known. She is a young U S -born Nigerian woman of Ijo ethnic group. She had her early education up to secondary school in Port Harcourt. In 1992, she went back to her birthplace for her bachelor's and master's degrees in Sociology and Economics, and Public Administration in 1995 and 1997 respectively. She relocated to Lagos in 2004 and has been there since then. Yellow-Yellow (2006), her first creative work, received Victor Nwankwo's 2007 Book of the Year Award. In the same year, Agary won the A N A / Chevron prize for environmental writing. This award was followed by the N L N G Prize for Nigerian Literature in 2008.
Agary's novel on the Niger Delta reveals her experience while growing up in the region. She examines the negative consequences of the oil politics in the region on Ijo women in particular and Delta women in general. The activities of the multinational oil companies with their destructive effects on the environment alienate Ijo women from their sources of financial strength, thus pushing them further down the ladder of the oppressed. The marginal position of Ijo women confirms the contention of Bill Ashcroft et al. that "in many different societies, women, like colonised subjects, have been relegated to the position of 'Other', 'colonised' by various forms of patriarchal...