Vulnerability and Consequential Complicity: The Figure of the Black Female Migrant in Miriam Tlali's “Devil at a Dead End” and Chimamanda Adichie's “On Monday of Last Week”

Abstract

In the short stories “Devil at a Dead End” (1978) and “On Monday of Last Week” (2009), the protagonists (migrants from Lesotho to South Africa and from Nigeria to the USA, respectively) are portrayed as vulnerable in terms of race, sexual violation, and exploitation. While capturing the complex vulnerability of the African female migrant, these stories also engage with the consequential complicity that constitutes part of the subjects' response to that vulnerability. This aspect of the stories is recognized as controversial and potentially regressive politically, but through an analysis of the power dynamics between “host” characters and migrants, and through careful theorization of the concept of complicity, this article concludes that the stories explore the possibility of empowerment through the transgressive agency of desire on the part of the black female migrant.