Gender in African Women's Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference [Hardcover]

Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1997

The concept of gender has rarely been used as a category of analysis in African literary circles, feminist theory is often seen as applicable only to western contexts. Critical strategies are needed for the study of women in African and post-colonial literatures. This book applies gender as a category of analysis to the works of nine sub-Saharan women writers: Aidoo, B, Beyala, Dangarembga, Emecheta, Head, Liking, Tlali, and Zanga Tsogo. The author appropriates western feminist theories of gender in an African literary context. In the process, she finds and names critical theory that is African, indigenous, self-determining, which she then melds with western feminist theory and comes out with an over-arching theory that enriches western, post-colonial and African critical perspectives. Abbenyi not only breaks the cycle of dependency on western critical theory, she also provides us with one of the first pan-African, comparative gender analysis of women's literature south of the Sahara. She reads side-by-side, Anglophone and Franco-phone women writers, transcending artificial European linguistic barriers that relegate the study of this literature to English or French studies. Abbenyi shows how the writers reinscribe African women as speaking-subjects in their fiction. The literary texts are shown to be an invaluable window in the on-going debates in the field of post-colonial theory that so far have failed to problematise the position of African women, thus offering reconstructive insights to feminist and post-colonial theories.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this fascinating book Nfah-Abbenyi (Univ. of Southern Mississippi) offers a series of well-written, perceptive essays examining works of well-known African writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Bessie Head, Mariama Bâ (Ba), Ama Ata Aidoo, and Tsitsi Dangarembga and a number of lesser-known African writers such as Calixthe Beyala, Delphine Zanga Tsogo, and Werewere Liking. Herself an African literary critic, the author takes a critical look at how African women writers coming from both Anglophone and Francophone traditions question and reinterpret the contradictions inherent in gender relations. Using African literary context and her own experiences growing up in Cameroon, she carefully examines feminist theories and how they relate to African literature. She discusses the issue of identity in the development of three major novels—Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood, Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, and Aidoo's Changes: A Love Story. She follows this with an examination of sexuality in the novels of three Cameroonian writers (Beyala, Zanga Tsogo, and Liking), and a comparative discussion of Head's Maru and two lesser-known novels. This book reaffirms Bessie Head's remark that books are a tool, in this case a tool that allows readers to understand better the rich lives and the condition of African women. Excellent notes and a rich bibliography. Upper-division undergraduates and above." —C. Pike, University of Minnesota, Choice, June 1998

(C. Pike, University of Minnesota Choice 1998) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, Assistant Professor of English & Post-Colonial Literature, University of Southern Mississippi, has contributed essays to Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, Oral Literature in Africa Today, and Womanhood and (M)othering in African Literature.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 188 pages
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr (December 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025333344X
• ISBN-13: 978-0253333445
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,889,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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