'Daughteronomy': Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, domestic amazons and patriarchal assumptions in Children of the Eagle

Abstract

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo is one of the outstanding vibrant feminist voices in Nigerian literature today. Her trilogy that started in 1996 was completed in 2002 with the publication of Children of the Eagle. In this novel she underscores the possible place, and role of umuada (women married out of a kin-group) and alutaradi (women married into a kin-group) in a quest to dismantle patriarchy in her Igboland. The novel interrogates patriarchal assumptions about women while pointing to hitherto uncelebrated facets of female panache and comportment in an otherwise unfavourable social and cultural matrix. In this essay, 'daughteronomy' refers to her dialogue with daughters married in and out of Umuga in Igboland and their enlistment in the struggle to topple male supremacy. Children of the Eagle fictionalises dimensions of what women know, expresses resistance to the male predispositions towards women while applying tropes that seek to foreground these imputations.