Unseen (re)creation : trafficking and migrant sex work in Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail and Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street
Literature can present us with many opportunities to transform our perspectives of a marginalized group. Nevertheless, with its capacity for political expression, there comes the risk of falling within stereotypical modes of representation. In my thesis I not only explore aspects of the sex trafficking industry, but also how literary works such as Becoming Abigail and On Black Sisters’ Street examine its underbelly. I will also examine the ways in which the global economy has helped criminal industries like this one to proliferate. In understanding the structure of global capitalism, we can trace similar patterns of exploitation between its behaviours in the corporate sphere and within the sex trafficking industry. The novels studied hereafter present different forms of representations of the trafficking industry. Where Becoming Abigail is focused primarily of the traumatic experiences the protagonist has endured, On Black Sisters’ Street offers a nuanced perspective on this industry, by tackling the ambiguities of the sex trade. This thesis emphasises the fact that the sex industry is composed of its visible—and at the very least decriminalized—side of the industry known as sex work, and its shadow that we know as sex trafficking. In the spaces in between we find those who are marginalized, the women and girls left unseen because they do not fit within the criteria of a perfect victim.  I seek to demonstrate that literature has an important role to play in shaping our understanding of who the marginalized people are, by contextualizing them within a frame of agency, rather than helplessness.
Sex trafficking migrant sex workers global economy trauma literature