Abstract

This paper examines silence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Zikora as a rhetorical and psychological practice through which the protagonist responds to relational pressure, maternal expectation and post-childbirth distress. Focusing on Zikora’s exchanges with her mother, her relationship with Kwame and her experience after childbirth, the study uses an intersectional feminist framework and qualitative close reading to trace how gender, professional position, transnational location and maternal responsibility shape the meanings attached to speech and withholding speech. The analysis attends to first person focalisation and internal monologue, which make Zikora’s private evaluations available even when she says little aloud. The paper argues that silence in the story cannot be reduced to passivity: it may register imposed exclusion, but it also provides reflective distance, emotional protection and a restrained form of resistance. Adichie therefore presents silence as an unstable practice whose meaning depends on who controls it and under what social conditions it occurs.

Keywords: Zikora, Silence, Intersectional Feminism, Motherhood, Gendered Expectations, Resistance, Self-Preservation

How to cite

Precious Promise Ilalokhoin (2026). SILENCE AS RESISTANCE AND SELF-PRESERVATION IN CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S ZIKORA. NATELCEP Journal of Languages and Communication Studies (NJLCS), 19(1), 88–94. https://www.natelcep.org/journal/articles/6aa8791b64cf5c0e8f125da7