This paper advocates that a reading of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street must expressly engage the writer’s ambivalence about migration for sex work. The reading approaches OBSS from an angle which concedes the tensions in Unigwe’s depiction of her female characters’ lives between constraint and comfort, violence and possibility. This (re)negotiates the mobile spaces and affective labours of interpretation, sometimes facing obstacles, and at others managing to clear a provisional passage towards ideas that are present in the text, but with less obviousness than others. The discussion notes elements of intersecting identity for the writer and her female protagonists as black immigrants in a predominantly white European space (Belgium), positions which constantly enjoin them to (re)negotiate their respective roles as migrant African women. Acknowledging abuses against her black female sex worker characters while at the same time giving them an emphatic sense of worth, Unigwe humanizes her female protagonists, inviting readers to respond to the women’s moving circumstances, rather than pre-judge them according to their profession. The novel ‘produces vexed implications’ instead of being able to be ‘read as rigidly determinate’ (Omelsky 94). Unigwe undercuts the limitation of telling a ‘single story’ about African female migrants who are sex workers in Antwerp, imagining the complicated delineations of their subjection and agency.

中文翻译：

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未解决的主题：Chika Unigwe 在黑人姐妹街的性工作

本文主张阅读 Chika Unigwe 的《在黑人姐妹街》必须明确表达作者对为性工作而移民的矛盾心理。阅读从一个角度接近 OBSS，该角度承认 Unigwe 描绘她的女性角色在约束与舒适、暴力与可能性之间的生活中的张力。这（重新）协商了解释的移动空间和情感劳动，有时面临障碍，有时则设法清除通向文本中存在的想法的临时段落，但不如其他人那么明显。讨论指出了作家和她的女主人公在以白人为主的欧洲空间（比利时）中作为黑人移民的交叉身份元素，这些职位不断要求她们（重新）协商他们作为非洲移民妇女的各自角色。承认对她的黑人女性性工作者角色的虐待，同时赋予她们强烈的价值感，Unigwe 将她的女性主角人性化，邀请读者回应女性的感人环境，而不是根据她们的职业预先判断她们。这部小说“产生了令人烦恼的暗示”，而不是能够“被解读为严格确定的”（Omelsky 94）。Unigwe 打破了讲述关于在安特卫普担任性工作者的非洲女性移民的“单一故事”的局限性，想象她们的服从和代理的复杂描述。而不是根据他们的职业预先判断他们。这部小说“产生了令人烦恼的暗示”，而不是能够“被解读为严格确定的”（Omelsky 94）。Unigwe 打破了讲述关于在安特卫普担任性工作者的非洲女性移民的“单一故事”的局限性，想象她们的服从和代理的复杂描述。而不是根据他们的职业预先判断他们。这部小说“产生了令人烦恼的暗示”，而不是能够“被解读为严格确定的”（Omelsky 94）。Unigwe 打破了讲述关于在安特卫普担任性工作者的非洲女性移民的“单一故事”的局限性，想象她们的服从和代理的复杂描述。