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Kaine Agary, Yellow-Yellow.(Book review)
- Article from:
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Africa
- Article date:
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March 22, 2008
- Author:
- Janis, Michael
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2008 Edinburgh University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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KAINE AGARY, Yellow-Yellow. Lagos: Dtalkshop (pb $12.95-978 97807 0833 7). 2006, 179 pp.
'"Yellow-Yellow". That is what most people in my village called me because of my complexion, the product of a Greek father and an Ijaw mother', relates Zilayefa, the protagonist of Kaine Agary's first novel. A swiftly moving bildungsroman, the story unfolds as seventeen-year-old Zilayefa passes her Baccalaureate and makes her way from her village in the Niger Delta region to Port Harcourt in search of a new life.
One of the intriguing aspects of the narrative is not that Zilayefa is extraordinary, but that she is an ordinary, intelligent young person encountering the difficulties ...