Masculinity in Crisis in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele and Alain Moreau’s Masculinity in Fiction

Contemporary fiction and feminist theory have increasingly examined masculinity not as a fixed essence but as a social performance under pressure, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions provides a rich starting point for undergraduate exploration of how Nigerian feminist thought addresses the construction of boyhood, fatherhood, and male privilege. This study read Adichie's epistolary text alongside selected theoretical and creative texts on masculine socialisation and the crisis of hegemonic masculinity in contemporary African literature, including works by Teju Cole, Elnathan John, and Christopher Okigbo. A feminist masculinity studies methodology drawing on Connell's masculinity theory and African gender scholarship was applied. The study examined how Adichie's prescriptive feminist text challenges the socialisation of Nigerian boys into forms of masculine entitlement, and how this challenge is dramatised in selected fiction by male Nigerian writers whose protagonists exhibit or interrogate hegemonic masculine performance. The analysis revealed that Adichie's feminist manifesto resonates with a growing body of Nigerian male-authored fiction that is self-consciously concerned with the costs of masculine performance. The study concludes that the intersection of feminist theory and masculine literary representation in contemporary Nigerian writing represents a productive emerging field and recommends the inclusion of both theoretical and creative texts on masculinity in Nigerian literature syllabi at undergraduate level across all geopolitical zones.

Keywords: masculinity, Nigerian feminism, Adichie, gender performance, African male fiction