Cultural Multiplicity and African Migrants’ Dilemma in Sola Owonibi’s The Black Men Of Bissonnet Street

Abstract

Cultural multiplicity is a growing concept in migration studies globally, it has some salient merits on the lives of the migrants, but its challenges are often worrisome as portrayed in Sola Owonibi’s The Black Men of Bissonnet Street. Previous critical engagements on cultural multiplicity have often focused on cultural hybridity and cultural loss with little or no attention paid to cultural multiplicity and its attendant dilemmatic effects on the life of African migrants and their families. This paper, therefore, attempts to investigate and examine the complex interplay between African migrants, cultural multiplicity and its consequences in the migrants’ marital and familial matters. The data for the study is the primary text which is Sola Owonibi’s The Black Men of Bissonnet Street. It will be subjected to critical textual analysis. Inspirations will be drawn from Homi Bhabha’s model of Migration and Hybridity Theory as the theoretical framework. This theory will undergird the analysis. It is discovered that cultural multiplicity has some advantages in the lives of the migrants. It is discovered that the challenges of cultural multiplicity are dilemmatic to the migrants. The paper concludes that cultural multiplicity has disintegrated the peace and harmony in the migrants’ marital affairs and families and as such, Africans should have a rethink before migrating to foreign countries to seek greener pastures.