Hybridity In Madam Madame Koto's The Famished Road

Hybridity:

Hybridity usually defined as “the creation of new trans-cultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonisation” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 2003). It takes many forms comprising cultural, political and linguistic. Ben Okri records a modification and addresses hybrid cultural models in The Famished Road. He connects the hybridity with structure that shapes the narrative. He states that “One of the strongest impulses which made me write The Famished Road is that I got tired of the traditional artifices and realism of the novel. I wanted to cut all that, going directly to the point in a different way, but still in the form of a novel” (Deandrea 2002, 47). He insists the novel form to tell his stories that draw much from Yoruba and West African folklore which keeps him in the literary tradition entitled as Postcolonial Aesthetic of cultural hybridity. Its theme and structure, borrowed from the abiku phenomenon of West African culture, record the modification and the changeover in a spatially exact ghetto of Lagos, and the recurring nature of the plot with many events reiterated in the course of the novel delivers the picture of transformation in The Famished Road.

Ben Okri has amalgamated some stories such as ‘The King of the Road’, ‘The White people’s story’ and many more to describe the African culture and tradition. She has been called as half human and half witch to create the atmosphere of fear to integrate African stories related to witch. Being a member of party of the rich, she never brings politics in her Bar. She is shrewd. When carpenter is about to flog Azaro with her permission because he has driven away Madame Koto’s Customers, that time she replies him to flog his own