A. O. Eruaga

This study explores how power and corruption are portrayed in Naomi Alderman’s The Power (2016) and Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000). Although these novels come from very different worlds, one from a futuristic, feminist setting and the other from a postcolonial African society, both reveal how the abuse of power leads to moral decay and injustice. In Alderman’s The Power, women gain a new biological ability that allows them to dominate men, turning traditional gender roles upside down. However, this new dominance soon exposes how easily power can corrupt anyone, regardless of gender. In Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain, power is shown through political oppression, censorship, and the silencing of truth in a corrupt postcolonial state. Together, the two novels raise an important question: is corruption caused by who holds power, or by the systems that allow power to go unchecked? This study uses feminist theory (especially Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performance) to analyse how Alderman questions gender and power, and postcolonial theory (drawing from Frantz Fanon’s writings) to explore Ndibe’s critique of leadership and institutional violence. By comparing both texts, the research shows that power, when not balanced by justice or accountability, always leads to corruption and oppression. The findings highlight that true freedom or equality cannot exist unless societies challenge the structures that sustain inequality and abuse.

This study examines racial discrimination as reflected in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give and Nic Stone’s Dear Martin, two contemporary African American novels that interrogate the lived realities of systemic racism, social inequality, and the struggles of Black youth in America. The research explores how both writers employ fiction as a mirror of society, using young protagonists—Starr Carter and Justyce McAllister—to expose the recurring injustices of police brutality, racial profiling, and the silencing of Black voices. Through the framework of Critical Race Theory, the study investigates how race and power intersect to shape individual and collective experience, while also analysing the use of narrative techniques such as repetition, epistolary form, and point of view in constructing emotional and moral depth. The methodology is qualitative and interpretive, relying on close textual reading and comparative analysis to reveal how both novels humanise the statistics of racial violence by giving them personal and affective dimensions. Ultimately, this study argues that The Hate U Give and Dear Martin do not merely recount the pain of Black existence; they reclaim agency through language, resistance, and truth-telling, positioning young Black voices at the centre of America’s ongoing discourse on justice and equality