Interconnectedness: an assay on the structure in Helen Oyeyemi’s short story “What is not yours is not yours”

Abstract

Oyeyemi’s what is yours is not yours creates a new world and new identity that suggest new beginning through a network of complex characters. Her collection of short stories interconnected between characters and their histories yet do not link within the events, thus it brings linear structure to the climax. The stories exemplify the amalgamation of unequal ideas and complexities faced by the Contemporary Nigerian in the Globalised World. Oyeyemi rejects the idea of the single thematic and political structure in isolation, further; it produces a real-world in new locations or ideas for identification and exploration of current post-modern society. Characters appear in each story to explore the concept of interconnectedness; conjugate the loosely connected elements of the story to the main plotline. Oyeyemi’s stratagem is to bring undeveloped characters’ identities and histories and sense of disconnected themes among stories into the bondage of expansive interconnectedness that identifies characters within social and communal relations.