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Nneka's Short Story: Growing My Hair Again

1236 Words5 Pages
In the short story ‘growing my hair again’, the author explains how women in the African traditions are held captive by the traditional culture and their struggles to trying to break away them using the main character Nneka. In Nigeria as well as in the other parts of Africa, culture was and still is given a lot of emphasizes especially when it comes to the traditional practices and beliefs. The culture however vary from one community to the other and ranges from the rights of passage, religious beliefs to other religious practices such as offering sacrifices and the role of women in the community .Nneka was married to a rich man in traditional Nigerian community and as in other areas, women had a role of being submissive to their husbands and subject to other cruel traditions. This traditions literary took their freedoms to make decisions or put strict boundaries to their extent of interacting with other people. When Nnekas husband died, she was required to shave her hair as a sign of mourning. According to the traditions of this community women were required to shave as a sign of their loss and the mourning had to continue for a period of one year even after the burial of the diseased (Faluyi and Dioka 110). This traditions were not favorable and to any liberal minded woman with the sense of modernization such as Nneka, it would be difficult to still endure the primitive practices months after the death of Okpala. However according to the author, there was no much choice
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