Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and the Paradoxes of Postcolonial Redemption

As a postcolonial text, Purble Hibiscus critiques the associated violences of Christian religion, colonial forces, and patriarchal domination. Yet it also complicates this indictment through parallel critiques of Igbo culture through contrasting characters whose own beliefs manifest the proliferated possibilities of a secular age: not repudiation of Igbo culture or of Christianity, but a dynamic process of critique and embrace that exemplifies the cultural hermeneutics suggested by West African theologian Mercy Amba Odyoye. To do justice to the text, readers in a Western location must resist the urge to overlook either side of this risky and difficult paradox.