“Migrant Women Are Always Added”: In Conversation with Ebun Joseph Akpoveta

Estudios Irlandeses

卷:12

Asier Altuna-García de Salazar¹ 

[1] University of Deusto, Spain ;

关键词: Immigrant Women;    Post-Celtic Tiger;    Gender-Based Violence;    Multiculturalism;    Integration;    New Irish;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Ebun Joseph Akpoveta was born in Nigeria in 1970. She is originally from Okpe in the State of Edo but she was later raised in Benin City. Her primary degree is in Microbiology from the University of Benin in Nigeria. Her professional career started in the State of Lagos and she was the Administrative Secretary for the Nigerian Britain Association before she moved to Ireland back in 2002. Since her arrival in Ireland, Ebun Joseph Akpoveta has been engaged in various activities and has been a prolific and pro-active member of the Nigerian community in her new home country. While in Ireland she has also furthered her academic instruction and has been a student of various postgraduate programmes. She obtained a Master’s degree in Education, Adult Guidance and Counselling from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She was recently awarded a Ph.D. by the UCD School of Social Justice in Equality Studies, one of her many passions apart from literature and writing. Ebun Joseph Akpoveta is also an equality activist, a career coach and a motivational speaker. She is an IACP-accredited counsellor and has great experience working with immigrants in Ireland. With this main cause in mind she founded The Unforgettable Women’s Network – TUWN which advocates for equality between men and women. She is a founding member of the African Women Writers Ireland, a Member of RTÉ Audience Council, and a columnist for the African Voice Newspaper.Ebun Joseph Akpoveta’s first book, Becoming Unforgettable. Uncovering the Essence of the Woman (2012), had the format of a counselling, self-help volume for women who need to articulate their experiences and cope with different plights. Her debut into fiction was with the harrowing novel Trapped: Prison without Walls (2013); here she embarks on the narration of difficult ordeals by immigrant African women in their new “host” country, Ireland. With this novel, Ebun Joseph Akpoveta interrogates the manner by which literary discourses in post Celtic Tiger Ireland challenge, elide or accommodate issues of globalization, immigration, and the notion of multiculturalism. With her fiction, Ebun Joseph Akpoveta questions much-used celebratory accounts of Irish multiculturalism, at least in media and political discourses, as integrationist and inclusive of the “Other”, and in particular, the female Other.Ebun Joseph Akpoveta lives in Dublin with her beloved family. I would like to thank her for her patience and kindness in collaborating to expand and finalise the present written version of her interview through e-mail.

【 授权许可】

Unknown