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Yellow-Yellow
Zilayefa, a young girl of Greek and Nigerian parentage, leaves her rustic existence and the protective grip of her mother in the village, in search of a better life in the city. With a recommendation from her church pastor, she is taken in and catered for by Sisi, an elderly woman, and her young friend, Lolo. Zilayefa is thrust into the bustling city of Port Harcourt, unprepared for the pitfalls awaiting a young girl so unsure of herself and in desperate need of direction. In Port Harcourt, Zilayefa is confronted by the prejudices against her racial identity. She struggles with accepting the void left by not knowing her father and tries to fill that void with the attention of an older lover. Through the experiences of her budding sexuality, Zilayefa grows to a higher level of knowledge and understanding and must define for herself what her life should be.
186 pages, Paperback
Published January 4, 2010
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August 2, 2011
AN ANALYSIS OF KAINE AGARY’S YELLOW-YELLOW IN RELATION TO THE NIGER-DELTA SITUATION
Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow is mainly about the story of a Greek-Nigerian girl called Zilayefa. It revolves around how this character, who against the odd of being born by an unwed mother, rises to affluence but later falls as a result of moral misconduct. In the novel, a form of creative distancing was done, with emphasis shifting away from the society to the individual. The order of the day had been that the residents of the Niger-Delta, where the novel was chiefly set, are a bunch of trouble makers, rabble rousers and recalcitrant militants. The Niger-Delta region of Nigeria contains a mass of land that generates over 60% of the nation’s revenue. Despite ‘sucking’ the natural resources there, little had been done by the authorities to help its populace amid the hazards crude oil exploration had caused them. The author, therefore, explores environmental and social issues as they affect the common people in that part of the country by presenting individual figures as they struggle to find existential fulfillment in life.
From the forgoing, it is deducible that the struggle for survival is the subject matter that pervades the entirety of the novel. The struggle for survival starts with Zilayefa’s mother, Ina Binaebi, who becomes a mother at eighteen following an affair with a Greek sailor and ends with Zilayefa's own struggle to stay alive after ‘eating the forbidden fruit’. This struggle is also revealed by characters such as; Emem, the white investors, the policemen, the Niger-Delta youths and even Admiral Alaowei Amalayefa. In relation to this, the themes derivable from the novel include the themes of prostitution, corruption, exploitation, struggle for the peoples’ emancipation, the role of education in making and molding beings, amongst others.
In the treatment of the theme of prostitution, the author presents characters, especially ladies, who ‘sell their bodies’ to sex-maniac men merely for mundane enjoyment. Agary, in the process, presents ladies who lose their innocence just for material gains from white men and fellow kinsmen, including the highly-placed among them. All aged between seventeen and eighteen, Binaebi, Ebiere, Zilayefa and others are presented as individuals who lack self-esteem and were easily weighed down into ‘getting belle’ and giving birth to ‘African-profits’, ‘born-troways’, ‘ashawo-pickins’, ‘father-unknowns’ (pg. 141); whom their ‘sweeties’ do not cater for. Binaebi, for instance, conceives Zilayefa out of a relationship with a Greek sailor she met at a disco party in Port Harcourt, with the hope him marrying her. This later turned out a tall dream. Pregnant Ebiere’s discussion with Zilayefa at the house of an age mate, who had just put to bed, indicates the man was jobless despite doing the deed. Zilayefa, despite not lacking in basic needs, having been braced by Lolo and Sisi, becomes a lady of easy virtue by allowing Admiral and Sergio into her. Admiral is presented as a dare-devil, who despite having a wife, though divorced, goes around chasing girls of his children’s mate in order to satisfy his sexual urge.
This subject is also exemplified in the instance, whereby the girls go for whiteys at all cost, in order to gain their attention and move ‘higher’. This also accounts for the birth of Emem, who like Zilayefa was born of mixed blood. Her father was Spanish while her mother was Nigerian. It is with this trend that the narrator notes that many of them never knew their fathers and were born of a ‘crop of yellows…full of variety, coloured by the Filipinos, the Chinese, the British, and the Americans who worked in the oil sector’ (pg. 74). The set of black women, who bleach their skins, which ‘betrays their innermost feelings, from embarrassment to excitement’ (pg. 36) are also doing so for the benefit of sex. To sum it up, the absence of parental model for Zilayefa’s mother before her escape, during her stay in Port Harcourt, and her eventual return home to face shame as an unwed mother of a somewhat ‘queer’ child, like others is put thus:
We were products of women of easy virtue who did not have morals to pass on to their children. (pg 74)
Another universal idea we have in this novel is that of bribery and corruption. The act of willingly using one’s power to do illegal things in return for money or to get advantage is not an uncommon phenomenon in this novel. Most individuals in the Nigerian society are culprits in this anomaly. From the youth to the elders, who were supposed to represent morality; not even the judges and policemen would have their hands clean of not having their palms ‘greased’. With this, things are not done the way they ought to be. Zilayefa, for instance, got her driver’s licence, having escaped the ‘normal procedure,’ which ‘required a driving test’ (pg. 85), which the licensing officers did not insist on it after parting away with three thousand naira. She, as a worker at Royal Hotel, got most of her spending from ‘dashes’ given by kingpins, who lodged in the hotel overnight. The corruptibility of the judges accounts for the poor and untrustworthy dispensation of justice. In the narrator’s view,
The judges are so corrupt that a simple case would be adjourned over and over again until the litigants and their lawyers got the message and paid some bribe to the judge. Whoever acted quicker received a judgement in their favour. Such was the way of the justice system. (pg. 106)
Describing the corrupt practices perpetrated by the police task force of the time the story was set, the Operation Sweep, the narrator notes that they were to ‘maintain law and order’, pretended to be in full effect, but law enforcement was lax, the police so corrupt, that if you had enough money, you could pay your way out of any police trouble.’ It was also noted on page 111 that the police officers’ salaries were miniscule and very irregular’, which accounts for their stylishly modified ‘begging’ of people who committed no offence at all. Even some of the youth groups, who were meant to struggle for justice for the people, had ‘become well-oiled extortion machines all in the name of the struggle. They stole, blackmailed, and vandalized for the progress and development of the Ijaw Nation, the Niger-Delta.’ (pg. 158). To sum up what corruption has turned the Nigerian establishments into, it is enunciated thus;
Because of how rough things were in the country, you had to grease someone’s palm to get anywhere, or, as in case, you had to be extremely lucky. If you went to a business office for the first time and approached your mission with fear in your eyes, you had to grease a line of palms, from the porter to the front desk person, before your reached the secretary, who would also need some palm-greasing to loosen her lips about oga’s availability and whereabouts.’ (pg. 76)
Closely related to the theme of bribery and corruption is the theme of exploitation. This refers to a situation treats somebody treats somebody else in an unfair way, especially in order to make money from their work. The whiteys and ‘blackies’ alike are exploitative in their dealings. Showing this, Kaine Agary demonstrates that the problem of the society is not only caused by the foreigners but also by the peoples’ leading the natives. From the homes, heads of families (fathers) are only nominal since they don’t perform their latent duties. They feed on what their wives fend for, in the family. Even at that, they still had ‘their exclusive right to make all the decisions inside and outside the home’ (pg. 40). Ordinarily, the ones who provide for the family were supposed to be direct all affairs there, but due to societal beliefs they are exploited into accepting what they might not approve of.
Also, the young boys, who threatened to rough up their leader, Amananaowei and his elders, whom they accused of receiving monetary compensation meant for the village, from the oil company and shared it amongst themselves. The said compensation was for the environmental damage done to the whole village but is being kept in the hands of the few while the majority, who were mainly the strugglers, were left to wallow in darkness. The exploitation of the whiteys was shown in the environmental degradation they have caused the residents of the lands where they had got their wealth. These sets of people also exploit girls who are after ‘good things’, by not paying them at all, or if at all, meagerly and harming them by making incisions on their bodies.
Moreover, we have the theme of struggle for peoples’ emancipation in the novel. The people seeking emancipation here refers to the residents of the Niger-Delta region, who had been embittered by their continuous marginalization by the government and the oil companies that have made their environments, like never before unfertile for planting, their waters undrinkable and their air contaminated with gas flaring. All these had brought people like Ken Saro-Wiwa and Isaac Adaka Boro and many others into inciting an insurrection against the government. Even the young boys were with the vision ‘of dying valiantly for the cause’, like their elders who had always been killed through kangaroo legal processes. It is noteworthy that Saro-Wiwa’s instilment of the sense of pride and entitlement to enjoy an environment free of the environmental, social and cultural destruction that came with oil in his community earned him the wrath of the then military junta of General Sani Abacha, whose government hanged him and nine other Ogoni kinsmen to death. The press also played a role in revivifying the call for a good living for the people. Their news reports had in some way influenced the people’s rampaging behaviour when discussions bother on ‘how the Ijaws and other ethnic groups were suffering and even dying while the wealth of their soil fed others.’ In aggravation, the youth kidnap oil company executives or bar oil company workers from doing their work’ (pg. 9). The little contributions the oil companies claim to do occasionally are even announced with under-information.
However, the role of education in molding lives is another key theme deducible in the novel. Education is defined as every activity that leads to the improvement of a personality in knowledge, skills and attitude that would build up his cognitive, affective, psychomotor and other latent functions. The educated could easily make sounding decisions unlike the uneducated or the barely educated. Education, which is mostly recognized with being literate, could take one farther than ever imagined. The narrator notes thus ‘I read because the books took me to other worlds and made me forget my own reality.’ Generally, going to school and getting the certificate is full of a lot of challenges. Some people have the ambition of ‘becoming medical doctors, studying pharmacy or microbiology but their examination marks fell short of the cut-off mark required for their dream course. In another way, those who have the points do not get into higher institution due to the unavailability of space. They then have to re-sit again and again if they don’t want to fall short of their dreams. Those who get admitted don’t know when they would graduate owing to doubt about protest on the consistency of staff salaries, political instability, and student conflicts on campus’ (pg. 33). Those who could not make it had no choice but to join the army in order to gain ‘reputation’ (pg. 34).
The reflection of the importance of education spurred this advice of Binaebi to her daughter: Your books should be your best friends. Spend more time with them than any other friends’ (pg. 78). This same line was towed by Lolo and Sisi who tried and ensured that Zilayefa got good education, even though she went wayward. It was also a similar one given by Admiral Amalayefa to her in the course of their discussion on the problems of the Niger-Delta. He said ‘…that is why you must go to school and got your degree so that no one has an excuse not to give you an opportunity in life (pg. 137). The lack of education could probably be the instigating the youth to perpetrate.
Generally, the atmosphere of Yellow-Yellow is political, cultural, biological and environmental. It has a lot do with a set of people who suffer for others in the ruling class to enjoy; a people deprived of the wealth, raped, orphaned, and even killed by the marauding beasts. It is about these people crying out for justice and hoping for a better tomorrow. The author in an interview with the National Life Newspaper on 4th March, 2011 notes that:
The Niger Delta issue is just as complicated as all other blessed regions in Africa. The issue is justice, or, in this case, injustice. When a people feel raped, pillaged and marginalized, there are bound to be problems. Nobody, not even a two-year old child, wants to feel cheated.
In addition, the novel is set between 1997 (a year after Saro-Wiwa was hanged – pg. 34) and June 9, 1998 (the morning after the death of the land’s leader – pg. 176-8). This period, historically, happens to be characterized by a lot of lawlessness, since the government in power, which ruled between November 1993 and June 1998 was despotic. The then head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha was popular for highhandedness, which earned him the wrath of all, home and abroad. His government’s execution of Saro-Wiwa and others earned Nigeria a pariah nation status. The oil producing lands were made unsafe for living, with little or no special care for the masses; fuel scarcity caused by non-functioning refineries was not uncommon at the period. The press and every other prominent individual or group that dared to face the government went under its hammer. It was this same period that the creation of new states and Local Government Areas led to intra-tribal wars. Upon all his atrocities, which was followed by a clamour for a democratic government, he volunteered to succeed himself.
The novel was set in three distinctive areas; the first is the rural Ijaw village, then Port Harcourt and the last is Lagos. It is noteworthy that the Ijaw village, where the main character hails from, is a microcosm of the entire rural land mass of the Niger-Delta.
In a bid to show participation and add much authenticity to the story, Agary made the narrator of the story a participant as well. It is indicated by the use of the first person pronouns – ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘myself’- considering the fact that the narrator can only tell what she witnesses alone. With these facts, one could deduce that the first-person narrative technique was used.
Furthermore, in terms of the use of language, the author succeeded in using language to differentiate various characters in the society. While the village-groomed are found speaking a mixture of their local language with pidgin and English, the whites, and those in formal occasions speak Standard English. With language as well, the author was also able to display an image of what oil spillage and the politics in it could look like, to the imagination of the reader. She states:
The water that flowed with streaks of blue, purple and red, as drops of oil escaped from the pipelines that moved the wealth from beneath my land and into the pockets of the select[ed] few who ruled Nigeria was the same water I drank…’ (pg. 39)
The title is the nickname of the main character. Yellow-Yellow just captures the character, the colours of oil and it makes a perfect imagery of the thoughts of the author, who in an interview with the New Nigerian newspaper on 24th May, 2008 noted that:
Yellow-Yellow was my response to the frustration I felt from meeting many Nigerians who were ignorant of the issues in the Niger-Delta and why there was so much agitation in the late 1990s.’
Conclusively, the presentation of ideas in this elegant narrative, stylish writing and starkly social reality provided a means for Agary to display an unsentimental account of an unsung aspect of the Niger-Delta experience.
Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow is mainly about the story of a Greek-Nigerian girl called Zilayefa. It revolves around how this character, who against the odd of being born by an unwed mother, rises to affluence but later falls as a result of moral misconduct. In the novel, a form of creative distancing was done, with emphasis shifting away from the society to the individual. The order of the day had been that the residents of the Niger-Delta, where the novel was chiefly set, are a bunch of trouble makers, rabble rousers and recalcitrant militants. The Niger-Delta region of Nigeria contains a mass of land that generates over 60% of the nation’s revenue. Despite ‘sucking’ the natural resources there, little had been done by the authorities to help its populace amid the hazards crude oil exploration had caused them. The author, therefore, explores environmental and social issues as they affect the common people in that part of the country by presenting individual figures as they struggle to find existential fulfillment in life.
From the forgoing, it is deducible that the struggle for survival is the subject matter that pervades the entirety of the novel. The struggle for survival starts with Zilayefa’s mother, Ina Binaebi, who becomes a mother at eighteen following an affair with a Greek sailor and ends with Zilayefa's own struggle to stay alive after ‘eating the forbidden fruit’. This struggle is also revealed by characters such as; Emem, the white investors, the policemen, the Niger-Delta youths and even Admiral Alaowei Amalayefa. In relation to this, the themes derivable from the novel include the themes of prostitution, corruption, exploitation, struggle for the peoples’ emancipation, the role of education in making and molding beings, amongst others.
In the treatment of the theme of prostitution, the author presents characters, especially ladies, who ‘sell their bodies’ to sex-maniac men merely for mundane enjoyment. Agary, in the process, presents ladies who lose their innocence just for material gains from white men and fellow kinsmen, including the highly-placed among them. All aged between seventeen and eighteen, Binaebi, Ebiere, Zilayefa and others are presented as individuals who lack self-esteem and were easily weighed down into ‘getting belle’ and giving birth to ‘African-profits’, ‘born-troways’, ‘ashawo-pickins’, ‘father-unknowns’ (pg. 141); whom their ‘sweeties’ do not cater for. Binaebi, for instance, conceives Zilayefa out of a relationship with a Greek sailor she met at a disco party in Port Harcourt, with the hope him marrying her. This later turned out a tall dream. Pregnant Ebiere’s discussion with Zilayefa at the house of an age mate, who had just put to bed, indicates the man was jobless despite doing the deed. Zilayefa, despite not lacking in basic needs, having been braced by Lolo and Sisi, becomes a lady of easy virtue by allowing Admiral and Sergio into her. Admiral is presented as a dare-devil, who despite having a wife, though divorced, goes around chasing girls of his children’s mate in order to satisfy his sexual urge.
This subject is also exemplified in the instance, whereby the girls go for whiteys at all cost, in order to gain their attention and move ‘higher’. This also accounts for the birth of Emem, who like Zilayefa was born of mixed blood. Her father was Spanish while her mother was Nigerian. It is with this trend that the narrator notes that many of them never knew their fathers and were born of a ‘crop of yellows…full of variety, coloured by the Filipinos, the Chinese, the British, and the Americans who worked in the oil sector’ (pg. 74). The set of black women, who bleach their skins, which ‘betrays their innermost feelings, from embarrassment to excitement’ (pg. 36) are also doing so for the benefit of sex. To sum it up, the absence of parental model for Zilayefa’s mother before her escape, during her stay in Port Harcourt, and her eventual return home to face shame as an unwed mother of a somewhat ‘queer’ child, like others is put thus:
We were products of women of easy virtue who did not have morals to pass on to their children. (pg 74)
Another universal idea we have in this novel is that of bribery and corruption. The act of willingly using one’s power to do illegal things in return for money or to get advantage is not an uncommon phenomenon in this novel. Most individuals in the Nigerian society are culprits in this anomaly. From the youth to the elders, who were supposed to represent morality; not even the judges and policemen would have their hands clean of not having their palms ‘greased’. With this, things are not done the way they ought to be. Zilayefa, for instance, got her driver’s licence, having escaped the ‘normal procedure,’ which ‘required a driving test’ (pg. 85), which the licensing officers did not insist on it after parting away with three thousand naira. She, as a worker at Royal Hotel, got most of her spending from ‘dashes’ given by kingpins, who lodged in the hotel overnight. The corruptibility of the judges accounts for the poor and untrustworthy dispensation of justice. In the narrator’s view,
The judges are so corrupt that a simple case would be adjourned over and over again until the litigants and their lawyers got the message and paid some bribe to the judge. Whoever acted quicker received a judgement in their favour. Such was the way of the justice system. (pg. 106)
Describing the corrupt practices perpetrated by the police task force of the time the story was set, the Operation Sweep, the narrator notes that they were to ‘maintain law and order’, pretended to be in full effect, but law enforcement was lax, the police so corrupt, that if you had enough money, you could pay your way out of any police trouble.’ It was also noted on page 111 that the police officers’ salaries were miniscule and very irregular’, which accounts for their stylishly modified ‘begging’ of people who committed no offence at all. Even some of the youth groups, who were meant to struggle for justice for the people, had ‘become well-oiled extortion machines all in the name of the struggle. They stole, blackmailed, and vandalized for the progress and development of the Ijaw Nation, the Niger-Delta.’ (pg. 158). To sum up what corruption has turned the Nigerian establishments into, it is enunciated thus;
Because of how rough things were in the country, you had to grease someone’s palm to get anywhere, or, as in case, you had to be extremely lucky. If you went to a business office for the first time and approached your mission with fear in your eyes, you had to grease a line of palms, from the porter to the front desk person, before your reached the secretary, who would also need some palm-greasing to loosen her lips about oga’s availability and whereabouts.’ (pg. 76)
Closely related to the theme of bribery and corruption is the theme of exploitation. This refers to a situation treats somebody treats somebody else in an unfair way, especially in order to make money from their work. The whiteys and ‘blackies’ alike are exploitative in their dealings. Showing this, Kaine Agary demonstrates that the problem of the society is not only caused by the foreigners but also by the peoples’ leading the natives. From the homes, heads of families (fathers) are only nominal since they don’t perform their latent duties. They feed on what their wives fend for, in the family. Even at that, they still had ‘their exclusive right to make all the decisions inside and outside the home’ (pg. 40). Ordinarily, the ones who provide for the family were supposed to be direct all affairs there, but due to societal beliefs they are exploited into accepting what they might not approve of.
Also, the young boys, who threatened to rough up their leader, Amananaowei and his elders, whom they accused of receiving monetary compensation meant for the village, from the oil company and shared it amongst themselves. The said compensation was for the environmental damage done to the whole village but is being kept in the hands of the few while the majority, who were mainly the strugglers, were left to wallow in darkness. The exploitation of the whiteys was shown in the environmental degradation they have caused the residents of the lands where they had got their wealth. These sets of people also exploit girls who are after ‘good things’, by not paying them at all, or if at all, meagerly and harming them by making incisions on their bodies.
Moreover, we have the theme of struggle for peoples’ emancipation in the novel. The people seeking emancipation here refers to the residents of the Niger-Delta region, who had been embittered by their continuous marginalization by the government and the oil companies that have made their environments, like never before unfertile for planting, their waters undrinkable and their air contaminated with gas flaring. All these had brought people like Ken Saro-Wiwa and Isaac Adaka Boro and many others into inciting an insurrection against the government. Even the young boys were with the vision ‘of dying valiantly for the cause’, like their elders who had always been killed through kangaroo legal processes. It is noteworthy that Saro-Wiwa’s instilment of the sense of pride and entitlement to enjoy an environment free of the environmental, social and cultural destruction that came with oil in his community earned him the wrath of the then military junta of General Sani Abacha, whose government hanged him and nine other Ogoni kinsmen to death. The press also played a role in revivifying the call for a good living for the people. Their news reports had in some way influenced the people’s rampaging behaviour when discussions bother on ‘how the Ijaws and other ethnic groups were suffering and even dying while the wealth of their soil fed others.’ In aggravation, the youth kidnap oil company executives or bar oil company workers from doing their work’ (pg. 9). The little contributions the oil companies claim to do occasionally are even announced with under-information.
However, the role of education in molding lives is another key theme deducible in the novel. Education is defined as every activity that leads to the improvement of a personality in knowledge, skills and attitude that would build up his cognitive, affective, psychomotor and other latent functions. The educated could easily make sounding decisions unlike the uneducated or the barely educated. Education, which is mostly recognized with being literate, could take one farther than ever imagined. The narrator notes thus ‘I read because the books took me to other worlds and made me forget my own reality.’ Generally, going to school and getting the certificate is full of a lot of challenges. Some people have the ambition of ‘becoming medical doctors, studying pharmacy or microbiology but their examination marks fell short of the cut-off mark required for their dream course. In another way, those who have the points do not get into higher institution due to the unavailability of space. They then have to re-sit again and again if they don’t want to fall short of their dreams. Those who get admitted don’t know when they would graduate owing to doubt about protest on the consistency of staff salaries, political instability, and student conflicts on campus’ (pg. 33). Those who could not make it had no choice but to join the army in order to gain ‘reputation’ (pg. 34).
The reflection of the importance of education spurred this advice of Binaebi to her daughter: Your books should be your best friends. Spend more time with them than any other friends’ (pg. 78). This same line was towed by Lolo and Sisi who tried and ensured that Zilayefa got good education, even though she went wayward. It was also a similar one given by Admiral Amalayefa to her in the course of their discussion on the problems of the Niger-Delta. He said ‘…that is why you must go to school and got your degree so that no one has an excuse not to give you an opportunity in life (pg. 137). The lack of education could probably be the instigating the youth to perpetrate.
Generally, the atmosphere of Yellow-Yellow is political, cultural, biological and environmental. It has a lot do with a set of people who suffer for others in the ruling class to enjoy; a people deprived of the wealth, raped, orphaned, and even killed by the marauding beasts. It is about these people crying out for justice and hoping for a better tomorrow. The author in an interview with the National Life Newspaper on 4th March, 2011 notes that:
The Niger Delta issue is just as complicated as all other blessed regions in Africa. The issue is justice, or, in this case, injustice. When a people feel raped, pillaged and marginalized, there are bound to be problems. Nobody, not even a two-year old child, wants to feel cheated.
In addition, the novel is set between 1997 (a year after Saro-Wiwa was hanged – pg. 34) and June 9, 1998 (the morning after the death of the land’s leader – pg. 176-8). This period, historically, happens to be characterized by a lot of lawlessness, since the government in power, which ruled between November 1993 and June 1998 was despotic. The then head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha was popular for highhandedness, which earned him the wrath of all, home and abroad. His government’s execution of Saro-Wiwa and others earned Nigeria a pariah nation status. The oil producing lands were made unsafe for living, with little or no special care for the masses; fuel scarcity caused by non-functioning refineries was not uncommon at the period. The press and every other prominent individual or group that dared to face the government went under its hammer. It was this same period that the creation of new states and Local Government Areas led to intra-tribal wars. Upon all his atrocities, which was followed by a clamour for a democratic government, he volunteered to succeed himself.
The novel was set in three distinctive areas; the first is the rural Ijaw village, then Port Harcourt and the last is Lagos. It is noteworthy that the Ijaw village, where the main character hails from, is a microcosm of the entire rural land mass of the Niger-Delta.
In a bid to show participation and add much authenticity to the story, Agary made the narrator of the story a participant as well. It is indicated by the use of the first person pronouns – ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘myself’- considering the fact that the narrator can only tell what she witnesses alone. With these facts, one could deduce that the first-person narrative technique was used.
Furthermore, in terms of the use of language, the author succeeded in using language to differentiate various characters in the society. While the village-groomed are found speaking a mixture of their local language with pidgin and English, the whites, and those in formal occasions speak Standard English. With language as well, the author was also able to display an image of what oil spillage and the politics in it could look like, to the imagination of the reader. She states:
The water that flowed with streaks of blue, purple and red, as drops of oil escaped from the pipelines that moved the wealth from beneath my land and into the pockets of the select[ed] few who ruled Nigeria was the same water I drank…’ (pg. 39)
The title is the nickname of the main character. Yellow-Yellow just captures the character, the colours of oil and it makes a perfect imagery of the thoughts of the author, who in an interview with the New Nigerian newspaper on 24th May, 2008 noted that:
Yellow-Yellow was my response to the frustration I felt from meeting many Nigerians who were ignorant of the issues in the Niger-Delta and why there was so much agitation in the late 1990s.’
Conclusively, the presentation of ideas in this elegant narrative, stylish writing and starkly social reality provided a means for Agary to display an unsentimental account of an unsung aspect of the Niger-Delta experience.
November 18, 2012
In Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, Noo Saro-Wiwa visits the University of Ibadan and talks to the president of the Student Association, Faith Odele. Odele is pretty blunt about the current dismal situation of the Nigerian university system, and also talks a bit about Nigerian writers in the diaspora versus Nigerian writers who have remained in Nigeria and only publish their work in Nigeria, remarking that people don't seem to want to read the work of Nigerians in Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa points out that Odele is referring to U.S.-based writers like Chimamanda Adichie and Helon Habila who have seen much success, unlike, apparently, Nigerian writers in Nigeria. Odele pointed out "Kaine Agary's book Yellow-Yellow as one that's similar to Adichie's [[book:Half of a Yellow Sun|18749], i think] but didn't enjoy the same publicity. 'If Agary had published the book in the U.S., Nigerians would have taken an interest in it.'"
Obviously this brought a lot of questions to my mind, including, "is this true?" but most importantly i wanted to know CAN I GET THIS BOOK AND READ IT?! and holy smokes, yes, i love where i work because i can get this book. i have just requested it. hopefully it is really on the shelf.
************
The book really was on the shelf and i have just read it. Unfortunately i don't agree with Faith Odele that it is on par with Adichie's work (i haven't yet read Habila's, so i can't compare Agary's with his). However, Kaine Agary's writing does show a lot of promise. it's just not as polished. All the elements are there, though...i think she should keep writing. hopefully she will have the resources to do so and get good publicity so that her readership will expand.
Obviously this brought a lot of questions to my mind, including, "is this true?" but most importantly i wanted to know CAN I GET THIS BOOK AND READ IT?! and holy smokes, yes, i love where i work because i can get this book. i have just requested it. hopefully it is really on the shelf.
************
The book really was on the shelf and i have just read it. Unfortunately i don't agree with Faith Odele that it is on par with Adichie's work (i haven't yet read Habila's, so i can't compare Agary's with his). However, Kaine Agary's writing does show a lot of promise. it's just not as polished. All the elements are there, though...i think she should keep writing. hopefully she will have the resources to do so and get good publicity so that her readership will expand.
Read
April 26, 2012Kaine took me to port harcourt on the pages of yellow yellow, and showed me a side of half castes (as we call) them I didnt know about. Well done
December 9, 2011
The novel describes Zilayefa's search for direction and purpose, her admiration for her city friends, her concern about her lack of a father and her racial identity, and her affair with a powerful older man. She is a sympathetic character and her voice seems authentic.
January 22, 2014
Fucking waste of my money. If I could give this book half (or a quarter star) I would. It had neither good writing, good character or captivating story. Just bad bad bad
December 3, 2019
I think this book emerged directly from the author's baffled observation of the Nigerian life and our nature.
Colourism, our swarming damaged Niger delta, our bizarre behaviour patterns and of course the way we exploit and corrupt each other.
She marvels at the small girl, big God lifestyle, the connection between love and common decency. And how a half caste, yellow skinned teenage girl can cope with the random fatalities of life.
However, this book is not some masterpiece or anything. Just a good yellow book you MAY enjoy if you have very low expectations and some time to while away on a lazy cold afternoon.
Colourism, our swarming damaged Niger delta, our bizarre behaviour patterns and of course the way we exploit and corrupt each other.
She marvels at the small girl, big God lifestyle, the connection between love and common decency. And how a half caste, yellow skinned teenage girl can cope with the random fatalities of life.
However, this book is not some masterpiece or anything. Just a good yellow book you MAY enjoy if you have very low expectations and some time to while away on a lazy cold afternoon.
August 4, 2021
Zilayefa is a seventeen year old girl who leaves her rustic village for Port Harcourt in search of a better life. The fortune that awaits her is more than she could have ever imagined.
The way Niger-Delta and Nigeria societies are represented is absolutely the way it was at the time. Reading this book makes me realize that not much has gotten better with Nigeria.
It is a really good read and definitely represents a realistic society.
The way Niger-Delta and Nigeria societies are represented is absolutely the way it was at the time. Reading this book makes me realize that not much has gotten better with Nigeria.
It is a really good read and definitely represents a realistic society.
August 10, 2025
As someone who currently lives in Bayelsa, I found the book quite engaging at some point. However, I think the book was everywhere and nowhere. Though I comfort myself in knowing that the writer probably did that on purpose and was just having fun with writing the book.
I had no emotional connection with the characters whatsoever and the plot was just...
I had no emotional connection with the characters whatsoever and the plot was just...
Want to read
July 9, 2019I want to read it.
August 25, 2021
Many will probably not know the tremendous depletion of nature in Southern parts of Nigeria. This book talks about it as well as the lifestyle of its people.
November 22, 2016
So after i already purchased Yellow Yellow and had started reading, I realized at one point I was forcing myself to continue reading for the sake of completion. There was nothing to draw me back to the book. Yellow Yellow isn't much of a compelling read. To make matters worse, I read a review about the book and then lost interest. Still, I had to complete the book. A book i started on 6th Nov, I was finally done with it 21st Nov. Thank Heavens!
December 10, 2015
The writing is a bit quirky and you can tell it's her first novel, however, I would read another book by this author. It's this young woman's story and moving to the city and being a mixed race girl. I thought it was funny that even the pages are out of order but even that didn't stop be from wanting to finish the story. I believe this writer has lots of potential to write a great novel.
April 17, 2008
More of a morality tale than a real novel. It was insightful, contained a lot of truth, and wasn't boring at all, but didn't deliver much else.
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