Feminism And Modernity In Anglophone African Women S Writing

This book re-reads the last 60 years of Anglophone African women’s writing from a transnational and trans-historical feminist perspective, rather than postcolonial, from which these texts have been traditionally interpreted. Such a comparative frame throws into relief patterns across time and space that make it possible to situate this writing as an integral part of women’s literary history. Revisiting this literature in a comparative context with Western women writers since the 18th century, the author highlights how invocations of "tradition" have been used by patriarchy everywhere to subjugate women, the similarities between women’s struggles worldwide, and the feminist imagination it produced. The author argues that in the 21st century, African feminism has undergone a major epistemic shift: from a culturally exclusive to a relational feminism that conceptualizes African femininity through the risky opening of oneself to otherness, transculturation, and translation. Like Western feminists in the 1960s, contemporary African women writers are turning their attention to the female body as the prime site of women’s oppression and freedom, reframing feminism as a demand for universal human rights and actively shaping global discourses on gender, modernity, and democracy. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of African literature, but also feminist literary scholars and comparatists more generally.

'A remarkable work, both for its compassion and critical insights, Chielozona Eze's Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women's Literature Feminist Empathy 'liberates' empathy from ideology and offers a focused way of reading literature within and across borders that also transcends limiting contexts.' -Maik Nwosu, University of Denver, USA 'In a thus far unsurpassed "sharing of affect," Professor Eze artfully deploys what he calls "feminist empathy" for third-generation Anglophone African women writers. In the wake of their foremothers' rejection of the double yoke of colonialism and patriarchy, this millennial generation of women writers reclaims "a body of their own" and its unaccountable pain. Eze's bold yet gentle gesturing towards these new female subjectivities makes him a male feminist, definitely a rare commodity on the Nigerian scene. His book is a high risk/high gain venture opening wide the portal of "human flourishing" for other African empathizers in the post-nation-state.' -Chantal Zabus, author of Between Rites and Rights: Excision in Women's Experiential Texts and Human Contexts, Université Paris 13 - Sorbonne Paris Cité, France 'Eze deftly demonstrates how contemporary African writing by women deploys feminist empathy to link ethics and human rights in a fresh interpretation of ubuntu -- the African philosophy of individual and community interdependence. With nuance and a rare attention to not only fiction but also poetry, essays and new media, Eze shows how recent works extending longstanding African feminist theories into new territory, proving Adichie and her sister-authors right: we should all be feminists.' -Tsitsi Jaji, author of Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music and Pan-African Solidarity and Associate Professor of English, Duke University, USA This book proposes feminist empathy as a model of interpretation in the works of contemporary Anglophone African women writers. The African woman's body is often portrayed as having been disabled by the patriarchal and sexist structures of society. Returning to their bodies as a point of reference, rather than the postcolonial ideology of empire, contemporary African women writers demand fairness and equality. By showing how this literature deploys imaginative shifts in perspective with women experiencing unfairness, injustice, or oppression because of their gender, Chielozona Eze argues that by considering feminist empathy, discussions open up about how this literature directly addresses the systems that put them in disadvantaged positions. This book, therefore, engages a new ethical and human rights awareness in African literary and cultural discourses, highlighting the openness to reality that is compatible with African multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and increasingly cosmopolitan communities.

This work examines the work of a group of African women writers who have emerged over the last forty years. While figures such as Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Wole Soyinka are likely to be the chief focus of discussions of African writing, female authors have been at the forefront of fictional interrogations of identity formation and history. In the work of authors such as Mariama Bâ (Senegal), Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), and Leila Aboulela (Sudan), there is a clear attempt to subvert the tradition of male writing where the female characters are often relegated to the margins of the culture, and confined to the domestic, private sphere. This body of work has already generated a significant number of critical responses, including readings that draw on gender politics and colonialism, but it is still very much a minor literature, and most mainstream western feminism has not sufficiently processed it. The purpose of this book is three-fold. First, it draws together some of the most important and influential African women writers of the post-war period and looks at their work, separately and together, in terms of a series of themes and issues, including marriage, family, polygamy, religion, childhood, and education. Second, it demonstrates how African literature produced by women writers is explicitly and polemically engaged with urgent political issues that have both local and global resonance: the veil, Islamophobia and a distinctively African brand of feminist critique. Third, it revisits Fredric Jameson’s claim that all third-world texts are “national allegories” and considers these novels by African women in relation to Jameson’s claim, arguing that their work has complicated Jameson’s assumptions.

"This is a cogent analysis of the complexities of gender in the work of nine contemporary Anglophone and Francophone novelists. . . . offers illuminating interpretations of worthy writers . . . " —Multicultural Review "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." —Choice ". . . a college-level analysis which will appeal to any interested in African studies and literature." —The Bookwatch This book applies gender as a category of analysis to the works of nine sub-Saharan women writers: Aidoo, Bá, Beyala, Dangarembga, Emecheta, Head, Liking, Tlali, and Zanga Tsogo. The author appropriates western feminist theories of gender in an African literary context, and 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.

This book examines the complexities of women’s lives in Africa and the transnational spaces of Europe and North America through the literary works of key African women writers. Using a postcolonial analytical framework, the book highlights the commonalities of African women’s identities and experiences across national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries in Africa and in western settings. It collates the multi-regional narratives of key African women writers who convey how women’s lives are shaped by social, economic, and political factors at home and abroad. It also illustrates the intersection of ethnicity, class, and gender that flows through all the texts examined. Unlike existing works that explore African women’s fiction, this book uncovers the transformation from postcolonial themes of nationhood to global modalities of post-independence writing through the lens of gender. The book engages with feminist expression through broad themes including religion, war and ethnic conflict, women’s status in society, tradition and modernity and local and global tensions. A unique approach to literary criticism of Anglophone African women’s writing, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of African Literature, African Studies, Women’s Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Cultural and Ethnic Studies and Migration and Diaspora Studies.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: keine, University of Nigeria (Humanities), course: Humanities and Post Colonial Studies, language: English, abstract: Modern African francophone and Anglophone Literatures date back to the era of the negritude movement. The pioneer African writer was confronted by the ugly past experiences of the inhumanity of the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Saharan Slave Trade coupled with the degradation of the colonial period. As a result, he decided to pitch his camp with his suffering people by prefering to portray this evil in his writings, creating awareness on ways forward and calling for reforms. His tool was the sociological method. He laid less emphasis on the German werkimmanenz, the French l’art pour l’art, the Russian Formalism and the North American close-reading. The African feminist writer also turned her back to the Euro-American version of feminism and preferred the home-made ideology termed Womanism and her sister acronyms such as Stiwanism and Motherism which maintain that men and women relationship and apportioning of roles in the society should be complementary and not rivalry-prone or confrontational, while condemning obnoxious cultural and anti-womanist practices. Hence African men and women should concert efforts in liberating the African continent which is still suffering from modern versions of Slavery and Colonialism.This research will apply a multi-disciplinary approach and invoke the womanist, psychoanalytical and existentialist theoretical frameworks inter alia to appraise the relevant works of Chinua Achebe, Aminata Sow Fall and Ahmadou Kourouma inter alia. Through their realist portrayals, these African writers have created awareness of the injustices perpetrated by African oppressors, both Euro-Americans and their African collaborators. This research is a call on African writers for more prophetic and liberating efforts in their creatic works and aesthetics. Liberation Literature should by so doing ursher in a GREAT REFUSAL of the status quo and a way forward towards the birth of the beautiful ones in Africa who will fashion out a home-made literary, political, economic and social transformation for the betterment of not only women, but also men as well as youths of Africa.

Critically examines influential novels in English by eminent black female writers Studying these writers' key engagements with nationalism, race and gender during apartheid and the transition to democracy, Barbara Boswell traces the ways in which black women's fiction criticality interrogates narrow ideas of nationalism. She examines who is included and excluded, while producing alternative visions for a more just South African society. This is an erudite analysis of ten well-known South African writers, spanning the apartheid and post-apartheid era: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb, Rayda Jacobs, Yvette Christiansë, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner. Boswell argues that black women's fiction could and should be read as a subversive site of knowledge production in a setting, which, for centuries, denied black women's voices and intellects. Reading their fiction as theory, for the first time these writers' works are placed in sustained conversation with each other, producing an arc of feminist criticism that speaks forcefully back to the abuse of a racist, white-dominated, patriarchal power.

Scorning those who feel obliged to apologize for applying western feminism to African literature on the basis that it perpetuates cultural imperialism, Harrow (English, Michigan State U.) uses a branch of thought that is associated with French feminists and is situated within the sphere of psychoanalytical criticism to lend insight into works of the first wave of African feminist writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo and Safi Faye, and the second wave represented by Tsitsi Dangarembga, Calixthe Beyala, Veronique Tadjo, Tanella Boni, and others. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.