Abstract
Recent migration to Europe has become the focus of some interesting fiction produced in the last decade. One such narrative is On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) by Nigerian-born Belgian writer Chika Unigwe, which deals with the experiences of undocumented African immigrants in the Flemish city of Antwerp who must survive as sex workers in order to pay the human trafficking networks that brought them to Europe. However, the novel does not only stand as a testimony of a sad social reality but also as an exploration of urban space, urban movement, and subjectivity in contemporary European cities. This article examines the intersections between the protagonists’ use of urban space, their social status as prostitutes, and the emotions circulating about them in the city, since they will lead to relevant insights about contemporary urban movement and its literary representation.
In recent years an important body of fiction has been produced inscribing the presence in European cities of newly-arrived immigrants as a result of global migration flows in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This includes novels by highly acclaimed authors like Monica Ali, with In the Kitchen (2009), or Peter Akinti with Forest Gate (2009), to name but two. Although less known to the public, one such text is Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street (2009), a most interesting novel not only because it explores the topic of recent migrancy but also because of its innovative approach to it. Perhaps one reason why it is less known is that it was published initially in Dutch (Antwerp: Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2007) under the title Fata Morgana, although the fact that it was written originally in English (Tunca, 2009: 3), the author’s first European language, 1 allows us to consider the novel within the Anglophone literary tradition.
On Black Sisters’ Street, Unigwe’s second novel after her more introspective De Feniks (2005), 2 can be taken as a pioneering text in the contemporary literary scene for several reasons. First, because it contributes to the visibility of a growing minority in Belgium in the last decade: the African and African-descended population, a community to which the author herself belonged until fairly recently — she now lives in the United States — as a Nigerian immigrant of Igbo descent arriving in Europe in the 1990s. 3 Second, and more important for the purpose of this essay, the narrative is also innovative because it undertakes the inscription of a specific group within the African diasporic community, which has often been neglected in literary accounts of immigration not only in Belgium, but in the whole of Europe: the experience of women trafficked for sex work.
Indeed, prostitution has been the object of analysis in sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies for over a decade (see, for example, Arthurs, 2006; Hart, 1995; Knopp, 1995; O’Connell Davidson, 2003). However, contemporary Anglophone fiction has hardly reflected prostitution’s pervading presence in recent migration flows and in present society as a whole, despite its being considered one of the great evils of the twenty-first century and as a frequent aim of global networks of human trafficking, a very widespread crime nowadays. Unigwe’s determination to search for authenticity in her portrayal of sex workers is illustrated by her attempt to talk to real-life prostitutes in Antwerp’s red-light district — that is, the area in the city devoted to sex-oriented businesses — as recounted in an autobiographical essay (Unigwe, 2007a), and to wear provocative clothes and roam the streets like a prostitute (Christie, 2010: 97; Evaristo, 2009: 1), presumably so that those in the profession felt closer to her and accepted being interviewed. This testifies to the author’s intention to be faithful to contemporary reality and, therefore, to the perception of her novel as a testimony of real experience, as she contends in one of her interviews (see Tunca, 2008).
But another source of interest in Unigwe’s novel is how it links the experience of the prostitute to a very specific urban context: the city of Antwerp, whose streets and neighbourhoods are a constant presence in the protagonists’ lives. Antwerp has been for centuries the historical capital of Flanders, the most prosperous region in Belgium, and stood in 2006 as the largest Belgian municipality in terms of population, with nearly half a million inhabitants. Although black Africans still seem to be a small minority (Phillips, 2004: 2), 4 Antwerp’s contemporary multi-ethnic nature — 13 per cent of its population have a migrant background (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2009: 7) 5 — can be attributed to its prominent position in the European economy thanks to the diamond industry, the docklands, and the world of fashion, which arguably allows us to consider it to a great extent as a “global city” 6 and, consequently, an attractive site for international migration (Kofman, 1998: 282).
However, Eleanore Kofman also highlights the fact that very often European cities “do not see themselves as societies of immigration despite decades of substantial immigration” (1998: 280) and this is certainly a central characteristic of Antwerp, particularly as in the opening years of the twenty-first century it was home to the largest far right-wing party in the European Union, the Vlaams Blok (now called Vlaams Belang), with an openly racist ideology and a significant percentage of the vote in the city at the time. This contrast is further compounded by the all too evident invisibility faced by non-white literary voices in the whole region of Flanders, as several critics have suggested (Bekers, 2009: 60; Phillips, 2004: 4) and which highlights the pioneering nature of Chika Unigwe’s contribution.
The relevance of the city in Unigwe’s narrative is supported by the prominent role of the urban spaces inhabited by the protagonists, four African prostitutes who share a flat in Antwerp after arriving illegally in Europe with the hope of a better future. As Fran Tonkiss argues, the figure of the prostitute occupies a controversial position in urban space not only because she challenges the traditional separation between public and private spaces, but also, as she contends in her analysis of Victorian prostitution, because
her sexualized presence confused the distinction drawn between the public sphere as a space of civility, formality and rationality, and the private as the site of intimacy […] On one level, the prostitute represented the incursion of the body and sex into public space. (2005: 98)
Although Tonkiss’s focus is mainly street prostitution, that most frequent in Victorian times, the position of sex workers in contemporary Belgium, where their activities are tolerated and even considered legal if performed under certain conditions, also deserves some attention as it problematizes in a similar way spatial divisions in the city. Thus, the four protagonists — Ama, Efe, Joyce, and Sisi — have to exhibit their semi-naked bodies in booths on the Vingerlingstraat, a street in Antwerp’s red-light district where window shopping for prostitutes has become an accepted ritual for local males and tourists. However, the legal status of sex workers in the city contrasts with their invisibility in most social spheres, as they are not expected to exist beyond the areas allotted to their business, nor to participate in urban life in the same way as other citizens. This situation adds, on the one hand, to their invisibility as immigrants in European cities, as mentioned before, particularly since the protagonists have all arrived illegally in Belgium, and on the other, to that linked to their position as female immigrants, who have been generally ignored and, therefore, rendered invisible in theories of international migration until very recently (Kofman, 1998: 288).
Another level of analysis in the novel has to do with the interaction between the protagonists as a result of their social status as prostitutes, which can be read in light of Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thesis about the circulation of emotions. If, according to this cultural theorist, emotions are relational, they are social and cultural practices which involve “(re)actions or relations of ‘towardness’ or ‘awayness’ in relation to [certain] objects” (2004: 8–9), we might argue that the figure of the prostitute very often stands in society as the object of an emotion explored by Ahmed: disgust. Ahmed defines this affect as “an intense bodily feeling of being sickened”, in such a way that “[t]he body recoils from the object; it pulls away with an intense movement that registers in the pit of the stomach” (2004: 85). 7 For Ahmed, disgust is an emotion that “sticks” and this explains, in my view, the lack of communication between the protagonists, as it might be said that the feeling of disgust prevails in their relationships, even when sharing the same profession. It is my perception that the circulation of disgust accounts to a great extent for the marginalization of sex workers in certain urban spaces, as it can be read as the expression of collective disgust towards their activities despite the legal status of their profession in Belgium.
At this point it is convenient to remember the plot, which develops around the women’s routines while sharing a flat on the Zwartezusterstraat — Black Sisters’ Street in translation —, which not coincidentally gives title to the English edition of the novel and bears some similarity with a real street in Antwerp (see Tunca, 2009: 18). One striking characteristic in their relationship is that, contrary to feminist expectations of sorority, their living together does not mean that they identify with each other’s position. In fact, the narrator herself suggests that theirs is a “relationship which skimmed the surface like milk” (Unigwe, 2010: 239). 8 Indeed, it is so superficial that they do not even know each other’s nationalities, real names, or life stories until one of them, Sisi, is found dead in violent circumstances. This event marks the beginning of a transformation in the others as they become aware of their vulnerability and gradually move towards solidarity and the sharing of past and present experiences.
The intersections between the protagonists’ use of urban space, their social status as prostitutes and the emotions circulating about them in the city will be the object of my analysis in this essay, as they lead to relevant insights about life in contemporary European cities, its literary representation and the situation of sex workers in the twenty-first century, who are often young immigrants from “Third World” countries trapped by networks of human trafficking. In this respect, Sisi’s behaviour is particularly relevant, as she is the only character to take an active position by reclaiming the spaces of the city for herself. Thus, her attitude brings to mind the struggle of immigrant communities to reclaim spaces in global cities (Sassen, 1996), a group to which she belongs, as well as to a more vulnerable one: that of undocumented, exploited sex workers.
Indeed, while a good part of the narrative takes place in the flat, with Ama, Efe, and Joyce telling each other their life stories after gaining awareness of their need for solidarity, this alternates with the fragmented third-person narration of Sisi’s circumstances and actions before her death, which include her increasingly frequent walks through Antwerp that challenge the spatial boundaries separating social classes. As for the other three, it is significant that their use of urban space is constrained by their profession. Thus, their status and work routines limit their movements and trap them in two spaces: on the one hand, the cramped, shabby flat they share with their madam and their pimp’s assistant, where they spend most of the day and whose location — the Zwartezusterstraat — gives the title and the setting to a good number of chapters, those in the present collecting the conversation between the surviving protagonists, which alternate with the fragmented narration of their individual stories. On the other hand, the second space corresponds to the booth where they display their bodies to possible customers on the Vingerlingstraat, a seemingly “privileged” space, which is occasionally substituted by their madam for lower-class sordid places — dingy hotel rooms or bar toilets — as a punishment for disobedience (8).
Thus, both the private, domestic sphere and the public one are represented in the narrative through two spaces which confine them and limit their freedom to act, giving readers direct insight into the misery of their situation. It is only at the beginning that we find the protagonists in a different space, also related to the private sphere: a party organized by one of them in an abandoned warehouse, whose guests are mainly other Africans from their own social background and which offers an early picture of their superficial, tense relationship even with other immigrants. The fact that two of them (Sisi and Joyce) use false names and never reveal their true identities until the telling of their stories — in Sisi’s case this never happens — corroborates their mistrust of each other and can be interpreted as a way for them to keep their subjectivities untouched and distance themselves from their humiliating, disappointing experiences in Europe.
The wish to escape from this situation is most visible in Sisi, to such an extent that her frequent wanderings through Antwerp can be interpreted as a way to flee from “her own existence”, as Daria Tunca suggests in her analysis of the novel (2009: 12). For her, this character has become “a prisoner of her own misguided choices” in life by equating happiness and social status, that is, wealth and respect, and as a result it can be said that her subjectivity has contributed to her subjection (2009: 12–13). But Sisi’s wanderings can also be perceived as the consequence of her need to inscribe herself in the city she inhabits, her need to belong and feel part of it, as much as of her wish to escape from her identity as a prostitute and from the objectification to which she is subjected because of it.
In a similar vein, her behaviour can be understood in the light of Michel de Certeau’s theories about the act of walking in the city. For him, this act represents “an elementary form of th[e] experience of the city” (1988: 93), which implies “a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian” (1988: 97–98; emphasis in original). In Sisi we can observe the attempt to explore and appropriate the urban spaces of Antwerp on the same terms as any other citizen, as well as to interact with individuals going through the same experience, which suggests her breaking with the spatial practices associated with her profession. If de Certeau articulates the act of walking as lacking a place, since “it is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper” (1988: 103), in Sisi this lack becomes even more obvious if we consider both her illegal status as a citizen and her socially stigmatized occupation. The image of the undocumented prostitute roaming the streets and inscribing her presence in the global city is also present in novels such as Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen (2009), set in twenty-first-century London and focused on an egocentric, male British chef, Gabriel Lightfoot, surrounded by immigrants in his work context. However, in this case the prostitute, a young Eastern European trafficked for sex work, only engages in this activity for a short episode which significantly provokes the anger of the protagonist (Ali, 2009: 340–341), as if by hiding in his home, the domestic sphere, 9 she did not have a right to enjoy the public spaces of the city.
In both female characters we can observe that curiosity plays such an important role that a parallel can be drawn with the figure of the flâneur, examined in detail for the first time by Walter Benjamin in the early twentieth century. Benjamin perceived the flâneur as a type linked to the city of Paris and expressing the desire and boredom of the upper middle-class male pedestrian who “walks long and aimlessly through the streets” (2010: 124). Although this figure has often been explored after Benjamin and applied to other urban settings (see Friedberg, 1993; Tester, 1994; Wilson, 1992), the possibility of a female flâneuse on the same terms — with a privileged status conferred by cultural superiority — is still objectionable for many critics, as women are generally subordinated or made invisible in cities as a result of their gender (see Wolff, 1985). For Tonkiss, the position of the prostitute stands in stark contrast to that of the flâneur precisely because of their different social status, since while the latter is perceived “in terms of detachment and distraction”, the former “is depicted in terms of encounter and infection” (2005: 100). As she explains, “while each has a critical relation to desire and to consumption, their agency in these respects is counter-opposed: the flâneur appears as the consuming and desiring subject, the prostitute as their troubling object” (2005: 100).
In On Black Sisters’ Street, Sisi — or Chisom, her real name in Nigeria — acts as a flâneuse in the sense of attaining agency; however, she does so not by adopting a superior position, but by seeking interaction with other citizens in terms of equality. The way for her to do this is to impersonate other types of urban identities through her clothes and speech, which implies not just a rather complex form of flanerie but also going beyond class boundaries. Thus, she pretends to be visiting the city sights like a tourist, buying worthless items and souvenirs, or to be an upper-class woman on a shopping spree, trying on fashion accessories in expensive shops:
Sisi imagined she was a tourist, some rich woman who could afford to travel the world for leisure, taking in sights and trying the food. Sometimes she dressed for the role. A cap, sunglasses, a bumbag hanging from her waist, camera dangling round her neck and a Dutch phrase book in her hand. On such days she walked into shops and smiled at shopkeepers — who, eager to make a sale, smiled back, all sweetness and light. She was somebody else, with a different life. She lived out her fantasies. (255)
By engaging in casual conversations pretending to be a rich woman who has to choose a wedding ring, a pregnant foreigner buying lace booties for her future baby, or an excited tourist speaking no Dutch and asking for photos to be taken (256–257), Sisi attempts to identify with the experiences of women from other social contexts and to change the way she has been perceived by European society since her arrival. The question of the gaze as theorized in different fields is relevant here, since we can say it is her anxious awareness of being viewed in a particular — negative — way that leads her to adopt this behaviour. Furthermore, a connection can be established with the manner in which Michel Foucault’s work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) connects the concept of the gaze to issues of power at work in society and also present in city life, since it can be stated that “[m]ovement around cities is mediated by power relations, blocked by gendered, racialized, sexualized and classed notions of who belongs where” (Edensor, 2000: 126). It is not surprising that Sara Ahmed also refers to power as inextricably linked to the emotion of disgust, since for her “[t]he relation between disgust and power is evident when we consider the spatiality of disgust reactions, and their role in the hierarchising of spaces as well as bodies” (2004: 88).
In view of this, Unigwe’s Sisi seems to be subverting power relations at work in contemporary cities, while at the same time she gives way to her fantasies, which also include the future she had once expected to have in Nigeria if everything had gone well, that is, if she had found a good job after completing her university degree and had married her long-term boyfriend Peter:
She was anonymous. She could be anyone from anywhere. She could be a married woman with a husband called Peter and a huge duplex in Ikeja [an upper-class suburb in Lagos, Nigeria]: the sort of woman who could afford regular holidays abroad, living from hotel to hotel in cities across the globe, Mastercard and Visa Gold at her disposal. She could be a professional single woman with money to burn and places to see. She was any story she chose. Far away from the people she knew and who knew her. (258–259)
In this quotation we can observe that seeking anonymity represents for Sisi the way to seek acceptance in society and obtain the visibility that is denied to her because of her condition as an illegal immigrant and a prostitute; but it is also the way to escape from her social context and from those who know her occupation in Belgium. This explains her embarrassment when on one occasion she is discovered in a shop by Segun, her pimp’s assistant, who offers to take her home aware that she is “out of place” (259). It is perhaps not surprising that her flatmates’ reaction on their arrival, already suspicious of her mysterious outings and shopping and now convinced that both are having an affair, should only contribute to increase the lack of communication between them, a dominant feature in their relationship until we get to the very end of the narrative.
Sisi’s wanderings also bring to mind Elizabeth Grosz’s theorizing about what she terms “the constitutive and mutually defining relations between bodies and cities” (1995: 104). For her “[t]he city provides the order and organization that automatically links otherwise unrelated bodies: it is the condition and milieu in which corporeality is socially, sexually, and discursively produced” (1995: 104). But Grosz goes beyond this when she considers the body an active element in the production and transformation of the city, in the same way as the city’s specific geographical, architectural, and municipal arrangements affect the constitution of corporeality (1995: 108).
Tim Edensor seems to be in agreement with this when he links bodies to movement and social interaction by suggesting that “bodies act upon the city, inscribing their presence through movement in a process of continual remaking. Accordingly, social relations are not only inscribed upon the body, but are produced by it” (2000: 121). Hence, through her clothes, speech, and body language Sisi actually manages to construct her body in a new way, far from the hostile, oppressive urban context in which she is forced to live — her difficulty to walk on Antwerp’s cobbled streets in her prostitute gear and high-heeled shoes is illustrative enough (203). She also manages to create more positive social relations, while at the same time she constructs the city as a friendly space she can enjoy and belong to:
She liked the Keyserlei with its promise of glitter: the Keyserlei Hotel with its gold facade and the lines and lines of shops. Ici Paris. H&M. United Colours of Benetton. Fashion Outlet. So many choices. She liked the rush of people, the mixing of skin colours, the noise on the streets. The Jews with their Hasidic discs, the women with their babies in pushchairs with big wheels. They all made her heart race, made her feel alive; a part of this throbbing living city. (254)
As observed in the previous quotation, Sisi’s wanderings help her feel part of the city of Antwerp and inscribe herself in it, a city that not only includes the various local landmarks which individualize it — the Cathedral, the Brabo statue, the Keiserlei, the Pelikanstraat — but also the numerous shops for international brands which inevitably feature in every world city today. The juxtaposition of the global and the local and the presence of multicultural elements — “the mixing of skin colours”, “the Jews with their Hasidic discs” — are important characteristics of the twenty-first-century metropolis that Antwerp also shares and which make Sisi more integrated as part of the immigrant community there. Her love of Antwerp is reflected in the many passages in which even its dirt appears as a positive idiosyncratic element (254); however, the one part of town she rejects is, significantly, the Schipperskwartier, the area where she has to carry out her profession:
With sunlight splashing rays on it, [the Schipperskwartier] had a deserted, wind-blown look. It looked almost ashamed, as if the light of day exposed it in a way it did not want to be seen: like a woman who is not yet comfortable with a new lover being caught on the toilet letting out loud farts. The houses looked sad, giving the area a desolate, mournful look. The sort of place that made one think of death. Sisi avoided it during the day, preferring to explore other parts of Antwerp which throbbed in the glare of the sun, full of the energy of a healthy toddler. (254)
The negative imagery this passage offers is almost self-explanatory: on the one hand, the area is personified as experiencing shame, which brings to mind Ahmed’s theories about the circulation of emotions; on the other, it is linked with sadness and death, an association which stands in stark contrast to “the energy of a healthy toddler” present in other neighbourhoods, which also “throb in the glare of the sun” instead of avoiding being seen. The imagery evoked by this description clearly reflects the protagonist’s feelings towards it.
Sisi’s acceptance by society eventually comes through her Belgian boyfriend Luc, whom she meets at a religious meeting when she tries to find spiritual support, and whose neighbourhood, Edegem, a commuter town close to the city centre, offers her the warmth and traditional friendliness of a rural community, in contrast with central Antwerp, which is for her “a city of strangers, of anonymity” (281): “She liked Edegem. There was an authenticity to the people there that made central Antwerp seem somewhat spurious. Here, people smiled and said hello to her” (280).
It is significant that no emotions of disgust seem to circulate towards her in this place, which can be attributed to the lack of proximity to the phenomenon of prostitution characteristic of suburbs, a proximity that Sara Ahmed considers necessary for the emotion to develop: “[d]isgust is clearly dependent upon contact: it involves a relationship of touch and proximity between the surfaces of bodies and objects. […] The object must have got close enough to make us feel disgusted” (2004: 85). It is under Luc’s influence and that of the new space that Sisi decides to start a new life with her real name, as is announced on the very first page of the novel, moving to his flat and forgetting the debt she has contracted with her arrogant, repulsive pimp: “Humming under her breath, relishing the thought of new beginnings, [Sisi] thought of how much her life was changing: Luc. Money. A house. She was already becoming somebody else. Metamorphosing” (1).
However, what she cannot foresee is the consequences of her decision: that her pimp would suspect something after hearing of her strange outings and not receiving his regular payments and would order her death at the hands of Segun. Sisi’s sad outcome contrasts with the catharsis experienced by her flatmates after telling each other their life stories, a task they perform in three fragmented narratives which take one third of the novel. The feelings provoked by their new knowledge and their pain at Sisi’s death link them in a bond of sorority that is portrayed in a moving scene:
[Ama] is crying. “Come here,” she says to Joyce and Efe. She stands up and spreads her arms. Joyce gets up and is enclosed in Ama’s embrace. Efe stands up too and puts one arm around each woman. Their tears mingle and the only sound in the room is that of them weeping. Time stands still and Ama says, “Now we are sisters.” (290)
But Sisi’s tragic ending also contrasts with the more optimistic futures of her flatmates, which come as materializations of their dreams and are announced through a prolepsis (278–279). However, it is significant that in their case their dreams come true as a result of their acceptance of their present position and identity, since it is the money they have saved through years of prostitution that allows them to start their dream businesses after paying off their debt: Joyce, by setting up a school in Yaba, Nigeria, whose name pays homage to Sisi; Ama, by opening a boutique in Lagos with her aunt.
This brings to the forefront the question as to what extent some immigrant sex workers embrace their activities voluntarily and, therefore, become complicit in their own situation in an attempt to improve their economic position and have access to life in the West. In her article “Sex Workers Incorporated”, Jane Arthurs comes to the conclusion that in some cases prostitutes “are driven by greed as well as by circumstances”, so their actions can be considered “morally ambivalent” (2006: 134). This view of prostitution as a choice is clear in three of the protagonists, with the exception of Joyce, the Sudanese refugee who is betrayed by her boyfriend and had expected a job as a nanny on her way to Europe. But of course in all cases they were ignorant of the brutal reality it entailed and never chose “to be imprisoned, beaten and raped” (Arthurs, 2006: 136), which is the ordinary experience of prostitutes controlled by third parties and not self-employed, as O’Connell Davidson explains in her analysis of the topic (2003: 211).
For Bernardine Evaristo this issue of agency is an important point in Unigwe’s novel, as it shows that the author “avoids the fallacy of women as passive victims. Hers make choices, for which there are consequences” (2009: 1). Efe’s chosen future adds to this controversy when she decides to stay in Europe and become the madam of her own group of African prostitutes, bought by herself at auctions in Brussels as if they were meat on sale (278). This suggests, as Tunca highlights, a dangerous shift “from exploitee to exploiter”, thus perpetuating what she calls “the subjection of African women in the West” (2009: 9).
Taking this into account, Sisi’s death can be read on the contrary as a kind of punishment for not accepting her situation, as she is the only one who rebels against her submission as a prostitute and who thinks she has a right to enjoy her life in Antwerp and its urban spaces like any ordinary citizen. Her eagerness to make her dreams come true, encouraged by her naive Belgian boyfriend — despite her initial reluctance — eventually makes her lose touch with reality and ignore the risks she is taking when challenging the dangerous network she works for.
Therefore, we can say it is Sisi’s wish to occupy a different space from that allotted to her in the city that provokes her tragic death, as she challenges Antwerp’s spatial division in what can be seen as a transgression of the social order. Even though as readers we perceive the injustice of her sad outcome, the final scene in which she travels to Nigeria as a spirit and curses Dele’s offspring may be intended to claim her agency and produce some relief, but it seems insufficient — or at least not appropriate — as a punishment for the pimp’s wrongdoing. In terms of the use of space, it is interesting that only when Sisi has decided to secretly move out of the flat does she voice some guilt at abandoning her flatmates, which signals some kind of affection towards them, and some positive feeling for the flat itself as a refuge against the unpleasant conditions of her profession:
She had Luc, she had a future after this, but the rest? What did they have? […]. The house on the Zwartezusterstraat was like a family home. The communal kitchen and the shared living room bound the women. […] It was where they could escape the glare of the Schipperskwartier, live a life that did not include strange men with sometimes stranger requests. (273)
To conclude, the social invisibility of the contemporary sex worker is made evident in the novel through the experiences of the protagonists and particularly through Sisi, who stands as an invisible flâneuse in Antwerp not only because of her profession but also because of her position as an undocumented African immigrant. This invisibility is also materialized at the spatial level, since they are confined to the domestic sphere and to those areas where they must perform their activities, and, as a consequence, are rendered invisible or marginalized whenever they try to move through other spaces in the city. The marginalization they experience can be interpreted as a result of the circulation of emotions in society, a theory developed in recent years by Sara Ahmed, whose perception of the emotion of disgust as linked to social rejection and issues of power has been particularly relevant here.
Subjectivity constitutes a key concept in the discussion of urban movement, but, as Unigwe’s novel shows, the individuality of cities must also be taken into account. The reality of Antwerp, with its historical, tourist attractions and its legal acceptance of prostitution — but little solidarity with immigrants and sex workers — makes it stand as an unusual European city which deserves being literarily inscribed. In On Black Sisters’ Street, Unigwe is not only inscribing Antwerp’s social reality but also the reality of African sex workers in present-day Europe, whose living conditions need to be made visible and understood as a step preceding the transformation of societies. The reflection offered by Tonkiss in her discussion of Michel de Certeau’s theorizing about the city illustrates some of the points made here and may stand, therefore, as an appropriate conclusion to this essay: “The experience of walking in the city […] will be very different depending on which city you are walking in, why you are walking, and who you are” (2005: 129). Unigwe makes visible this fact by portraying the movements of African sex workers variously walking through Antwerp.
Footnotes
Funding
This work was supported by the Spanish government through its Ministry of Science and Innovation [I+D+i research project COSMOPOLIS FFI2010-17296].