Navigating Identity in Immigration: A Postcolonial Study of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's The Dragonfly Sea

Abstract

This research examines how The Dragonfly Sea reframes immigration as a tidal, multi-sited process rather than a one-way border crossing. Set between Kenya’s Pate Island and East Asia, the novel follows Ayaana as kinship, religion, language, and state agendas tug her in competing directions. Using postcolonial theory, Owuor portrays the oceanic world as an alternative map to land-based nationalism, where islands, sea routes, and port cities create a network in which identity and belonging are shaped through memory, oral traditions, and ritual practices. A study of Ayaana’s selection as a “descendant” of Zheng He, her education in China, and her encounters with security regimes reveal how heritage can be validated, branded, and weaponized by institutions. The textual analysis shows three key moves. First, Owuor dislodges Euro-Atlantic migration templates by centering Swahili, Arab, and Sinophone circulations. Second, she spotlights the gendered textures of mobility—care, vulnerability, and endurance—often obscured by policy talk. Third, her multilingual prose and partial translations stage cultural translation as lived labor, not gloss. The novel converts the Indian Ocean into a method: identity is tidal, citizenship is contingent, and maps are scripts that people resist, rewrite, or sail around. Read this way, The Dragonfly Sea offers a humane critique of heritage politics and a richer vocabulary for thinking immigration beyond borders.