Ifeoma Chinwuba’s African Romance, a single-breath choreo-poem that challenges patriarchal structures and reimagines female agency, remains underexplored despite its Afrocentric engagement with gender conflict, particularly within the institution of marriage. This qualitative study adopts an eclectic theoretical framework, combining postmodernism and Catherine Acholonu’s theory of Motherism, to examine how Chinwuba deploys dramatic, poetic, and postmodern techniques—particularly eclecticism, intertextuality, pornography, parody, and madness—to interrogate gender relations and expose infidelity, narcissism, moral relativism, and broader socio-political dysfunction. Through these formal and thematic strategies, the poem foregrounds the fragmented realities of contemporary gender dynamics while simultaneously critiquing the patriarchal ideologies that sustain female marginalisation and familial instability. Mallama, the central figure of the choreo-poem, emerges as a counter-stereotypical female subject who resists objectification, rejects blind tolerance of toxic relational structures, and challenges male chauvinism, while affirming the dignity of womanhood, the sanctity of marriage, and the ethical value of family. Rather than advocating gender antagonism or separatism, African Romance advances a motherist vision of gender complementarity grounded in mutual respect, cooperation, and relational accountability. By synthesising postmodern critique with Afrocentric feminist reconstruction, Chinwuba transforms the choreo-poem into a subversive and dialogic space through which alternative models of equitable and harmonious gender relations are imagined.
Keywords: Afrocentric feminist ideologies, Intertextuality, gender complementarity, gender dynamics, postmodern aesthetics
