Published in 2007,
The Opposite Houseis Helen Oyeyemi’s second novel about the experience of migration. Oyeyemi’s first novel,
The Icarus Girl,focused on a child, Jess, the daughter of a white British father and a black Nigerian mother, living in London. In
The Opposite House,the protagonist is an adult. Maja, a black Cuban, also resides in London, having migrated to Britain as a child. Maja experiences feelings of dislocation and fragmentation as a result of her double displacement. In an interview, Oyeyemi describes Maja as “twice removed, removed from West Africa, removed from Cuba, and now she’s trying to kind of negotiate this placelessness” (Martin). Although Oyeyemi’s novels are not autobiographical, Oyeyemi acknowledges that her protagonists experience many of the…
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Citation: Buckley, Chloe. "The Opposite House". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35616, accessed 21 November 2024.]
