Full Description
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.
Contents
Part I: Feminist Perspectives from the African Continent Introduction: Literary Herstories of African Women's Lives 1: Radical Feminist Synergy and Sexual Exploitation in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero and God Dies by the Nile 2: Caste, Class, and Women's Identity in Bessie Head's Maru 3: Sisters of the Soil: Women's Resistance in Muthoni Likimani's Passbook Number F. 47927 4: Postcolonial Disjunctures and Urban Spaces in Amma Darko's Faceless Part II: Voices from the Diaspora in African Women's Fiction 5: Unveiling Women's Identities in the African Muslim Diaspora in Leila Aboulela's Translator and Minaret 6: Ruptured Spaces of the Self in We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo 7: Black Venus Dreams and the Migrant Body in Igiaba Scego's Adua 8: Afropolitan Energies in the 21st Century: Immigrants, Dreamers, and Marginalized Others in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Conclusion: Narrating African Women's Lives in Africa and the Diaspora
