Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
First Advisor
Leah McCormack
Abstract
In the late 1890s, Father Francis Murray, the only member of his family who survived the Great Famine in Ireland, journeys to the Igbo hinterlands in Nigeria in a stubborn and vengeful pursuit of one goal: to defeat British Anglicans. He endears himself to the besieged ethnic group by bringing them medicine during a dysentery epidemic, and so convinces the Christian converts among them to abandon the Anglican society for his Roman Catholic mission, thereby displacing the Anglicans who are a dominant force in the region. But this victory results in bitter rivalries with great consequences. One of his new converts, Ebele, a former Anglican, has a grave secret: she is hiding the truth of her twin children in an era when twin children are condemned to death as abominations, and because of this she kills an ambitious Anglican catechist, Okwuadigo, who was privy to that secret and who desperately attempted to use it to blackmail her into returning to the fast declining Anglican fold. This murder sets off a sweeping domino effect of a curse that impacts her children’s destinies, down to contemporary generations. This project follows the Irish priest and the converts in their struggle against British colonization and the rivalries spurned by that “scramble for Africa.”
Subject Categories
Creative Writing
Keywords
creative writing, igbo hinterlands, Father Francis, Ebele
Number of Pages
163
Publisher
University of South Dakota
Recommended Citation
Olisakwe, Ukamaka, "THE THINGS THEY KNEW" (2024). Dissertations and Theses. 262.
https://red.library.usd.edu/diss-thesis/262