Migration and exile constitute recurrent leitmotifs in recent postcolonial narratives. Existing studies on migrant fiction focused on the stealthy and risk-laden movement of migrants in search of greener pastures, with little attention paid to the concrete experiences of migrants in their host lands. This is the thrust of this study, which examines the dialectics of exile and existentialist concerns in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street. The study adopts Existentialism as its analytical framework. The text was purposively selected for its apt inscription of exile and existentialist motifs. The research is a qualitative one and adopts the interpretive design. The tropes deployed are the diaspora, identity negotiation, nostalgia, and return migration. Findings reveal that in spite of the dogged resolve by Third-World migrants to leave their traditional homelands for a foreign one, they soon come to grasp with the ambivalences of exile occasioned by the fact of disillusionment, displacement, deprivation, and pain. Existentialist realities such as dread, despair, absurdity, and pessimism typify their experience in the host land. Rather than offering the much-anticipated reprieve, exile is a disillusioning and disgusting experience characterised by rancour, despondency, and regret. It is an experience in hardship, angst, and loss. Unigwe’s work is a quintessence of existentialist art, which projects the absurdity, nihilism, crime, and death that characterise humanity’s experience in the contemporary world. The work depicts Third-World subjects’ experience in foreign lands as a stream of sorrow punctuated by cataracts of momentary joy.
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Volume 4 | Issue 3 | Year 2026 | Article Id: LLL-V4I3P103 DOI: https://doi.org/10.59232/LLL-V4I3P103
Distance as “A Field of Tension”: Exilic and Existentialist Dilemmas in Chika Unigwe’s on Black Sisters’ Street
Micah Okon Asukwo, Dele Maxwell Ugwanyi
| Received | Revised | Accepted | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Jun 2026 | 22 Jul 2026 | 15 Aug 2026 | 08 Sep 2026 |
Citation
Micah Okon Asukwo, Dele Maxwell Ugwanyi. “Distance as “A Field of Tension”: Exilic and Existentialist Dilemmas in Chika Unigwe’s on Black Sisters’ Street.” DS Journal of Language, Linguistics and Literature, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 19-32, 2026.
Abstract
Keywords
Exile, Existentialism, Despair, Nostalgia, Absurdity.
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