Righting Migrants’ Stories in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late: A Review

Abstract

Chika Unigwe is renowned for her writings that centre on migrant issues, sex trafficking, trauma, and rape. She employs the novel and mostly the short story genre to emphasise these subjects as they affect women, hence lending her voice to the third-generation women writers. Unigwe in this new collection of short stories tries to represent the migrant stories by exploring different aspects of immigration. She also emphasises two main subjects that are often difficult to express in literary works by women—rape and trauma. With the rather paradoxical title, Better Never Than Late, 10 different short stories, some of which are interlinked to a migrant couple, Agu and Prosperous, and their friends who visit them every weekend, portray the mirage of the dream of finding greener pastures overseas.