"Speaking the Truth to Power": Resisting the Dictator in Selected Poems by Amal Dunqul and Odia Ofeimun

Abstract

The mounting sociopolitical upheavals, along with corruption and military dictatorship have functioned as adequate themes for the writings of Amal Dunqul and Ofeimun. Both writers have adopted "Speaking Truth to Power" as an ideology not only to document the consequences for such sociopolitical turbulence, but also to face the authority with its own atrocities. Both of them have employed this concept into their writings in order to empower their people to move to ask for their rights. They have believed in the strong role of literature in changing societies. The thesis mainly deals with the role of the both writers under autocratic regimes. It also deals with the influential role of literature, poetry in particular, in dystopian states. It shows how poetry maybe influential in changing the society, as it can function as a mirror to the atrocities of the authority and a tool to speak out the agonies of the oppressed.