DISILLUSIONMENT AS CENTRAL IN THE LIVES OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: THE CASE OF TWO ETHIOPIAN DIASPORA NOVELS

Abstract

Though few thematic and narratological studies were done on Ethiopian Diaspora novels, detailed reading of the novels on disillusionment is unavailable. But disillusionment is probably a concept that well describes the diaspora situation. This study is a comparative thematic analysis of disillusionment in the African diaspora characters represented in ‘The Texture of Dreams’ and ‘The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears’. The results showed all the African migrant characters in the novels experienced disillusionment. Their disillusionment resulted from unemployment, underemployment, fear of unemployment, unachieved higher education goals, lack of appreciation, and powerlessness. Due to these, the immigrant characters fail to realize their dreams of a happy and satisfied lives and live in frustration and apathy. And the novel ‘The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears’ shows the causes and stages of disillusionment more elaborately. Except for one character whose disillusionment seems eased by joining the academia and starting romance, the rest nurse their wounds of disillusionment drinking alcohol and releasing their stifled griefs upon each other. No character reverses disillusionment. Thus, disillusionment seems central and inescapable in the lives of the alienated and culturally dislocated African diaspora. Doubly othered both as immigrants and blacks, they seem to have been left to wallow in frustration and apathy never finding a cure and nursing themselves with whatever provides temporary painkiller relief
Keywords: Disillusionment; African/Ethiopian Diaspora; Novel; Alienation; Cultural dislocation; the American Drea