The Afropean Sex Work Pipeline and the Satirical Disruption of Reductive Binaries in Chika Unigwe’s Novel On Black Sisters’ Street

Abstract Building on multiple scholarly contributions that analyse Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street as a counternarrative that captures the intricacies of the female characters’ transnational identities, desires, and choices, this article foregrounds the novel’s satirical strategies in challenging reductive binaries and making the contradictions of the Black diaspora visible. Central to this inquiry will be the question of how Unigwe explores the ubiquitous experience of existing at the intersection of Blackness, femaleness, undocumented immigrant status, and commercial sex work, using these intersections to dialogue the Black diaspora and narrativize the transnational. While maintaining the gravity of human rights issues such as rape, genocide, and femicide depicted in the novel, I examine how the identities of the pimps and intermediaries in the Afropean sex work pipeline complicate binary narratives of Western and male oppressors. The figures of the pimps and their identities, I argue, expose entrenched neoliberal and neocolonial structures that trace back to the histories of transatlantic slavery and colonial capitalism. Ultimately, I contend that through satirical strategies, Unigwe brings crucial depth to discussions surrounding commercial sex work, particularly in relation to the racialized transatlantic power relations that mediate this marginalized form of labour and African women’s disenfranchised participation, provoking us to reevaluate our reductive binary thinking on power relations.