The amazing playwright Ngozi Anyanwu didn’t just focus on one woman’s particular story when she wrote the lead role of Kelechi in The Homecoming Queen– it was an encapsulation of several resilient black women.
“ She’s me, my sisters, my other first-generation cousins,” Anyanwu said about the protagonist within the play happens to be a novelist who returns to her family’s hometown in Nigeria to see her ailing father.
Moreover, with books from authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to actresses such as Yvonne Orji, The Nigerian narrative of people within pop culture is consistently expanding.
Now, although the themes and motifs showcase of the resilience of women from Africa’s most populated country, it also encompasses and goes above and beyond regarding the diaspora. It further depicts the fact that strength can also a defense for past traumas in a relatable and comical way.
The play speaks to how we culturally deal with trauma, how some of us are asked to forget about it, bury it, keep it moving as a means of survival…,” Anyanwu said.
All in all, The Homecoming Queen is an important message to the ever-growing conversations on consent, trauma and mental health, and its timing couldn’t be any better.
For more information on the play click here!
