Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses a number of political and social issues in her expansive sophomore novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Chief among them is her examination of the various facets of the Nigerian Civil War that spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. During this time, a section of Nigeria attempted to secede and the citizens of this area formed the short-lived country of Biafra. Half of a Yellow Sun follows the interconnected lives of a number of characters as the incipient country of Biafra rises and falls. Biafra seceded from Nigeria for a number of political and economic reasons. Interestingly, Adichie focuses on a major social issue that contributed to the secession: ethnic divisions within Nigeria. Indeed, Adichie emphasizes the mistrust and violence that occurs between the Igbo and the Hausa. In a striking moment in the novel, Odenigbo chastises Olanna for sympathizing with a Hausa man:
"What's the matter is that you are saying that a bloody Muslim Hausa man is upset! He is complicit, absolutely complicit, in everything that happened to our people.... How can you sound this way after seeing what they did in Kano? Can you imagine what must have happened to Arize? They raped pregnant women before they cut them up!" (238).
In her depiction of the Nigerian Civil War, unquestionably the biggest political issue in Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie foregrounds the ethnic tensions that spurred Biafra's short-lived secession from Nigeria.
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