War front and ‘War back’: Women and Nigeria-Biafra War in Iroh’s Forty-eight Guns for the General and Emecheta’s Destination Biafra
Ngozi Ezenwa-Ohaeto (PhD)

Abstract
The periods of 1967-1970 recorded a secession of Eastern region of Nigeria which birthed a new state of Biafra and the eventual bitter war dubbed Nigeria-Biafria war. In the said war every participant, men women, youths and even children, played varied roles and these roles were fictionally captured by various African literary authors. Using Iroh’s Forty-eight Gunsfor the General and Emecheta’s Destination Biafra, this study examined how these roles were recorded by the African narrators of the armed conflict experiences with particular attention on how male and female writers adequately represented and interpreted the roles played by women and men, paying attention on how the chosen writers depicted the genders’ activities in their works. The study also examined the extent of the influence of the narrators’ socio-cultural background are reflected in their narration especially on their representation of the women and men’s activities during the deadly armed conflict. This investigation equally tried to find out if the genders of the writers in any way influenced their level of representation of the opposite sex in their narrations and the reason for that. To achieve these, the principles of hermeneutics will be adopted as both the theory and approach in the examination.

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