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.

The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.

"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.

Gender Issues in African Literature examines the ways in which some protagonists of African fictions are made to counter and challenge intertwined Western discourses on gender, employment, sexuality, and health. Here the conflict between Tradition and Modernity is argues from the favourite premise of male supremacist ideology showing how women have unlearned these false concepts to build a sustained feminist movement and (re)learn the value of sisterhood. There is a bold attempt to reread Achebe as a consistent in urging women to fight the seemingly oppressive structures that have traditionally discriminated against them, and to disregard their diversity and embrace their unity. A chapter of Feminist Re-writing disagrees with the attempt to equate theory with political activism and presents Feminist literature as more than a verbal assertion that points to Feminist aesthetics and politics. The use of the trauma theory and testimonio literature to explore traumatisation of female characters and its impact for Zimbabwean civil society is a useful addition to these gender studies in African literature.

Society, Women and Literature in Africa explores the ideological, literary, political, cultural and ethical issues related to feminist writing. She discusses how contemporary African writers have tried to counteract men’s false assumptions about sex, love, society, fecundity and womanhood, and further details how African writers have responded to the demands of feminism. “Woman’s Cross Cultural Burden in the selected works of West African Female writers” explores the recurrent themes of motherhood, polygamy, abandonment and widowhood in the works of Nwapa, Emecheta, Alkali, Aidoo and Mariama Bâ. In “Prostitution: A Metaphor for the Degradation of Womanhood in Bode Osanyin’s the Noble Mistress”, the author approaches the subject of woman degradation in society from the perspectives of comprehensive research and an in-depth referencing. “Gendered Social Division of Labour in the African Novel” explores the theme of unfairness, of institutionalized differentiation in the African novel. It reveals the total emasculation of woman in patriarchy and her desire to be liberated from male-annexation. “The Prison World of Nigeria Woman: Female Reticence in Sefi Attah’s “Everything Good Will Come”, the author explores the dimensions of “gender silences”. She shows how woman’s voice has been stolen in patriarchy, thus rendering her a social and political mutant. “Womanhood as a Metaphor for Sexual Slavery in Nawal El Saddawi’s Woman at Point Zero” underscores that in patriarchy a woman is educated to make an object of herself for male pleasure. She is excluded from politics as a result of religion. “The Ugly Face of Ghana in the New Millennium: Alienation of Children in Amma Darko’s Faceless” is a stylistic study of the consequences of globalization in postindependent Ghana. In “The Theme of Dispossession in A.N Akwanya’s the Pilgrim Foot”, the author examines the myriad perspectives of dispossession and the dispossessor.

How does our understanding of Africa shift when we begin from the perspective of women? What can the African perspective offer theories of culture and of gender difference? This work, as unique and insightful today as when it was first published, brings together a wide variety of African academics and other researchers to explore the links between literature, popular culture and theories of gender. Beginning with a ground-breaking overview of African gender theory, the book goes on to analyse women's writing, uncovering the ways different writers have approached issues of female creativity and colonial history, as well as the ways in which they have subverted popular stereotypes around African women. The contributors also explore the related gender dynamics of mask performance and oral story-telling. This major analysis of gender in popular and postcolonial cultural production remains essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, cultural studies and literature.