Girl at the margin: historicizing Adunni’s subjective rendition of colonial Lagos, 1930–60

Abstract

Abstract This article tells one of the many stories that remain largely untold despite the vast literature on colonial Lagos history. Although the social history of Lagos has witnessed increasing interest on the part of historians and scholars from other disciplines and has been told in relation to sex, childhood, social welfare, state, gender and elitism, many personal renditions of the city’s history are hidden from mainstream narratives. The article examines one such personal history. In particular, it exhumes narratives from the phenomenological content of Adunni’s story – of teenage and early adult years, largely lived in the late colonial period. Adunni’s personal experiences speak to those of other living (though few) individuals whose status as living archives often enriches scholarly interrogations but who are regarded as sources of history rather than history itself. This article presents Adunni as a telling example of this neglected aspect of colonial Lagos history.