Onye Aghana Nwanne Ya: Trading Boundaries for Bridges: A Study of Edgell’s Beka Lamb and John’s Unburnable
Abstract
One of the primary markers of the Igbo nation is the belief in the necessity, potency and supremacy of the group. The Igbo person draws essential identity, value, support and nourishment from a functional group. The establishment, attachment to, and dependence on, community illustrates the concept of ohaka as it repudiates unadulterated individualism and exclusion. It also operationalizes and rationalizes the popular pan-Igbo maxim; onye aghana nwanne ya. Onye aghana nwanne ya is a philosophical statement which underscores the practice of inclusion and communality enshrined in the Igbo interpersonal and group relationship structure. Therefore, this paper represents an intellectual attempt at building further solidarity with Igbo diaspora societies, represented in this context by West Indian Igbo communities of Belize and Dominica, using Edgell’s Beka Lamb and John’s Unburnable as principal channels of discourse. The research derives its primary analytical insight from Adamson and Demetriou’s (2007) notion of Diaspora as a society beyond a state boundary and which maintains a connection with its homeland. Furnished with these, it identifies Belizean and Dominican Igbo communities, mainly through religious beliefs and practices like funeral rituals, ancestors, gods and goddesses, masquerades, and magic. It further interprets these as mechanisms and methods of sustaining an essential oneness and constant communion with an original motherland. Finally, the research maintains that until the Igbo society at home becomes one, symbolically speaking, with her diaspora kinsmen and women, it does grievous injustice to the animating spirit of commonality aptly articulated in onye aghana nwanne ya.
Author(s): Adaobi Muo
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Published: May 21, 2021
Journal: Igbo Studies Review (ISR)
Issue: 9
Pages: 55-74
Keywords: Igbo, diaspora, territoriality, communality, cohesion
Publisher: Goldline & Jacobs Publishing
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