“She Is Waiting”: Political Allegory and the Specter of Secession in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

In this essay, I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) as a political allegory, legible within its characters’ personal relationships and historical circumstances. This allegory, I argue, refuses closure in ways that suggest an alternative both to the prevalent notion that the novel has an apolitical, purely tragic ending and to dominant narratives about the Biafran secession’s “inevitable” failure. My reading thereby intervenes in critical conversations about Half of a Yellow Sun, the Biafran state, and secession and self-determination throughout Africa.