‘And now we are sisters’

Fracture, trauma and the limits of female solidarity in On Black Sisters’ Street

Bibliographic Data

ID19224755
AuthorsEsther Mavengano (0000-0003-2499-4508, University of South Africa, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-13
Publication date2026-04-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1472-5843 • E-ISSN: 1472-5851
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14725843.2026.2650399
OpenAlexW7154592191
LanguageEN
References cited22

In Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, African women confront the harsh realities of transnational sex work, forming fleeting connections in a world that continues to deny their presence. This study examines the novel’s nuanced inscriptions of trauma, fractured intimacies and the precarious solidarity that forms even amid systems of exploitation. I draw primarily on Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory while engaging Judith Butler’s notions of precarity and (un)grievable lives alongside African feminist epistemologies to analyse the intersecting structures of racial abjection, sexism, neoliberal class exploitation and restrictive migration regimes that shape the protagonists’ lives within transnational sites of disposability and erasure. I argue that the author strategically employs the narrative of abjection to present an intricate ethical terrain in which ambivalent, sometimes troubled, female bonds are formed within the claustrophobic, surveilled confines of transnational spaces. Although these alliances are profoundly fractured, they signify an essential yet fragile possibility of sisterhood created within zones of neglect, violence and anguish. Unigwe employs a non-linear plot, deferred memory and an affective lexicon of suffering to engender a radical narrative politics attentive to brokenness. I interpret the motifs of self-naming, migration and self-mourning as forms of feminist resistance to oppressive structures. This study therefore demonstrates that the novel depicts female bonding as a hard-won resource that enables survival and concurrently asserts an insurgent, transformative politics of becoming. From trauma’s fractures, the pulse of sisterhood flickers into view in Unigwe’s work

Context (archaeology) · Narrative · Solidarity · Work (physics) · Latin American and Latino Studies · Modern American Literature Studies · Short Stories in Global Literature

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