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In their article "Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta" Debarshi Prasad Nath and Juri Dutta discusses the work of two writers belonging to different continents, India and Nigeria. Interestingly, the novels of the two writers Dutta is analyzing — Lummer Dai and Buchi Emecheta — never heard of each other. Both novels are based on the custom of bride price, both writers speak out against the stifling rigidity of traditional customs, and uphold aspects of modernity in languages other than their native tongues. At the same time, both writers affirm the sanctity of the traditional institutions and customs. Emecheta relates her novel through the woman's voice and describes the limited choices available for her protagonist against the overarching presence of the traditional institutions. Dai's novel, on the other hand, presents a more optimistic picture regarding the possibility of change through his protagonist who successfully overcomes the immediate obstacles on her way to self-fulfillment. Debarshi Prasad Nath and Juri Dutta, "Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.2 (2012):  Thematic Issue New Work in Comparative Indian Literatures and Cultures. Ed. M.G. Ramanan and T. Mukherjee Debarshi Prasad NATH and Juri DUTTA Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta Buchi Emecheta's description of female experience in Africa has earned her international fame. What sets her apart as a novelist is the unmistakably woman's and African point of view she adopts in her narrative: she looks at African women's issues from a gendered perspective (Katrak). Although there is often a tendency amongst scholars critics to label her as a feminist, Emecheta has differentiated her own Afrocentric perspective from that of her Western counterparts (see Nnaemeka; Stratton). Critics and scholars praised Emecheta's narrative prowess, her psychological probing of female protagonists, and her powerful social critique of traditional African culture, as well as Western colonialism (see Dubek; Lauer; Stratton). Emecheta writes about the injustice of male prejudice and the inflexible social structures in her native country in The Bride Price without romanticizing about it. Emecheta writes about the injustice of male prejudice and the inflexible social structures in her native country in The Bride Price. The novel is set in Lagos and Ibuza during the 1950s, the protagonist is Aku-nna, a Nigerian girl whose father dies when she is thirteen, leaving her in the charge of her father's brother. The only reason why her uncle allows Aku-nna's schooling to continue is because he hopes that it will increase her bride price. However, much to the chagrin of her relatives, she falls in love with her teacher, Chike, who belongs to a family of slaves and whose social status prohibits their involvement. While Chike and his family are able to do well within colonial Nigeria, their choices, particularly when it comes to being fully merged in African society, is limited (on this, see, e.g. Ilo). Regardless of the opposition of her family and a potential suitor who kidnaps her, Aku-nna elopes with Chike and thus deprives her uncle of her bride price. In the end Aku-nna dies in childbirth, as if to prove the fateful superstition that a woman whose bride price is unpaid will not survive the birth of her first child. Through the story of Aku-Nna, Emecheta illustrates the value of education and self-determination for aspiring young women who struggle against sexual inequity, racism, and miserable marital arrangements to achieve individuality and independence. Emecheta is as critical of patriarchal Afican society as she is aware of the intrinsic value of Native folk wisdom. While critical of patriarchal tribal culture, Emecheta's fiction reveals an abiding reverence for African heritage and folklore which reflects the divided loyalties of Africans torn between the competing claims of tradition and modernity. Emecheta's novel follows the clash between emerging modern values changing African lives and the traditional ways of life Africans continue to cling to. Emecheta believes in reformation of the existing order rather than a complete overthrow. In the light of this, we intend to make sense of the means of resistance adopted by the protagonist Aku-Nna. However, Aku-Nna's stunning act of defiance of the traditional order (her marriage with Chike) needs to be contextualized before it is analyzed. In five of his six published novels, Lummer Dai wrote about the Adis of Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern state of India. Dai is a pioneering writer of Arunachal Pradesh and was serving as the director of the Department of Information and Public Relation (on Dai, see, e.g., Dutta). He not only had access to governmental policy making but was also in the know of the transformations taking place in the urban Arunachal of today. However, as he was a first generation literate, coming originally from rural Arunachal, he also had a close sense of affiliation with his roots. This provided him with a two-fold advantage: he could keep shifting between two worlds with which he was equally familiar and this probably made him equipped to write about the process of transition that Arunachal Pradesh went through in the postcolonial period of India. Dai wrote in Assamese, the language of the neighboring state of Assam. Assamese was the medium of instruction in educational institutes of Arunachal Pradesh until about twenty-nine years back. In an interview, Dai said that "I think that mother tongue is the best medium to express one's feelings. Assamese is not my mother tongue. But I have an association with the Assamese language since the time I was being suckled by my mother" (Dai qtd. in Bhuyan 3). Dai received the Sitanath Brahma Choudhuri Award from the Assam Sahitya Sabha for Kanyar Mulya (The Bride Price) published in 1978 and it continues to be his most well known novel. It depicts the Adi social life through its presentation of the social institution of marriage. The protagonist Gumba is a victim of the tradition of taking and giving bride price that was prevalent among the Adis. Her protest against the long-established system of child marriage almost plunges her into death. Kargum, Debarshi Prasad Nath and Juri Dutta, "Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta" page 3 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.2 (2012):  Thematic Issue New Work in Comparative Indian Literatures and Cultures. Ed. M.G. Ramanan and T. Mukherjee her father, is a representative of the old generation who strictly adheres to traditions, social practices and beliefs, but finds himself in conflict between his love, care, and sense of duty for his daughter and his "accountability" to society. According to the social custom of the Adis, the marriage of a girl was fixed at an early age, sometimes just after birth, taking the price of the bride from the groom's family. In Kanyar Mulya, when Gumba is still a child, her father Kargum enters into an agreement with Mindak according to which after a certain period of time Gumba will have to go to Mindak's house as the wife of his son Dakat. Even before she comes to know about her own marriage, Gumba voices her feelings against child marriage and the bride price custom while talking to her friend: "Man considers woman as a commodity. Immediately after a female baby is born, they think that it is the acquisition of a new property. This custom of selling and buying of girls must be done away with at the earliest (Kanyar 8; unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine). Gumba is taken away to her in-laws' place and undertakes a fast to protest against the tyranny she is subjected to. In fact, she is determined not to surrender till death: "I am fighting against acts of inhumanity and barbarism that are committed against women" (Kanyar 65). At the end of the novel we are given to understand that Gumba's bride price is returned, setting her free to pursue her aspirations. There is a distinct note of feminism in the novel. Dai has shown the traditional patriarchal society of the Adis as it is, without any attempt to scoff at it. Feminism is manifested in the novel in the form of a protest against the established patriarchal norms and the attempt to establish one's own identity. There are two aspects of Emecheta's and Dai's novels which make an impact on readers: both writers write in languages which are not their native tongues. In ethnolinguistic research attention is paid to the way in which perception and conceptualization influence language and show how this is linked in different cultures and societies. Talking about the difficulties associated with the act of translating the images, symbols, and idioms of the native language into a new language, Tilottoma Misra argues that "language cannot be separated from the material lives of the people and from the culture which it reflects" (3653). Having said this, one is of course aware of the wider implications of the idea of translation because in a sense all writing is an act of translation. Misra (3653) uses Minakshi Mukherjee's phrase "twice born fiction" to refer to Dai's works within the context of Indian Literature (3653). Dai's writings, like Emecheta's, transcend the boundary of their Native cultures to be available for a wider readership. Arunachal Pradesh exemplifies the adage of "divided loyalties" when it came to the use of Assamese as link-language vis-à-vis Hindi. After the independence of India, successive generations of Arunachalese had to grapple with the issue of conflicting loyalties towards these two languages. Hindi was a must for national integration and with the threat of China always looming large over Arunachal, administrative policies of the Indian government favored the use of Hindi. However, for historical reasons (starting with trading activities with the people of the neighbouring regio