The book is a comparative analysis of recent films by African male and female filmmakers and literary works by female African authors from Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Togo and Burkina Faso. The films are Finzan (Cheikh Oumar Sissoko, 1990), Women with Open Eyes (Anne-Laure Folly, 1994), and Faces of Women (Desire Ecare, 1985). In addition, the manuscript includes the study of Women are Different (Flora Nwapa, 1986), Double Yoke (Buchi Emecheta, 1983) and So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba, 1980). Curry analyzes the homogeneous themes such as oppression, sabotage, cultural alienation, exploitation, sexual bargaining and the changing dynamics of sexual relationships that appear through these productions. She concludes that African women continue to undergo a metamorphosis. This transformation is the result of a blend of traditionally African and European influences.Modernist terms such as â oefeminismâ and â oewomanismâ intended to capture the emerging African women as subjects and not objects of study, are avoided. In so doing, a theoretical approach is used, based on the authorâ (TM)s own experiences in West Africa. Then, building from that premise, Curry analyzes the novels and films within this context to either prove or disprove her theories. Enthusiasts without past experiences in the area of African literature and African films, and also students and scholars in African studies, specifically in comparative literature, anthropology, womenâ (TM)s studies, sociology, African history, film studies and social studies, will all find this book of great interest. In raising the issues that West African women face, this book, as the title suggests, aims to awaken other African women and indeed a western readership to the fast changing lives of women in Africa. Georgina Holmes in African Research and Documentation No. 102, 2007

Annotation. The tumultuous uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have seized the attention of media, but what about the rest of Africa? This text presents the 2011 uprisings in their African context.

Dzigbordi Dzordzome, a young woman from a strict Ghanaian home, struggles between the desire to forge her own identity, please her parent, and marry her college sweetheart Maxwell Owusu. Dzigbordi eventually leaves for the US, where she has to adjust to the realities of a culture she has imagined from books and movies. Her friendships and experiences in the US inevitably affect her relationships back in Ghana, and change her perceptions of herself and her homeland.

Winner of a 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, this moving manifesto “empowers women to access a fearlessness that will enable community progress” (Essence). Through one incredible woman’s journey from a small Zimbabwe village to becoming one of the world’s most recognizable voices in women’s empowerment and education, this book “can help any woman achieve her full potential” (Kirkus Reviews). Before Tererai Trent landed on Oprah’s stage as her “favorite guest of all time,” she was a woman with a forgotten dream. As a young girl in a cattle-herding village in Zimbabwe, she dreamed of receiving an education but instead was married young and by eighteen, without a high school graduation, she was already a mother of three. Tererai encountered a visiting American woman who assured her that anything was possible, reawakening her sacred dream. Tererai planted her dreams deep in the earth and prayed they would grow. They did, and now not only has she earned her PhD but she has also built schools for girls in Zimbabwe, with funding from Oprah. The Awakened Woman: A Guide for Remembering & Igniting Your Sacred Dreams is her accessible, intimate, and evocative guide that teaches nine essential lessons to encourage all women to reexamine their dreams and uncover the power hidden within them—power that can recreate our world for the better. Tererai points out that there is a massive, untapped, global resource in women who have, for one reason or another, set aside their wisdom, their skills, and their dreams in order to take care of the personal business of their lives. Not only is this a type of invisible suffering experienced by countless women, this rich resource is a secret weapon for improving our world. Women have the capacity to inspire, to create, to transform—and Tererai’s call to action “shines as a beacon of hope to women everywhere” (Danica McKellar, actress and New York Times bestselling author).

Caulder writes of the links between her heritage, her spirituality and the practices of Voodoo and Shamanism. color photos.

Recovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Performing Arts: Yemonja Awakening provides context to the myriad ways in which the African feminine divine is being reclaimed by scholars, practitioners and cultural scholars worldwide. This volume addresses the complex ways in which the reclamation of and recognition of Yemonja facilitates cultural survival and the formation of African -centric identity. These cultural practices are symbolically represented by Yemonja, the African female deity who is the mother of the entire world of the Orisha. Also known as Yemaya, Iemanya and Yemaya-Olokun, Yemonja is the deity whose province is the ocean and, given that the Middle Passage was the cultural and spatial crossroad to Africa’s numerous diasporas, this deity links the shared histories of African and African –descent cultural praxis worldwide. Since Yemonja also references sexual, creative, spatial and spiritual energies, the editors and contributors see her as pivotal to this project as an expansive and original cartography of impact of the African feminine divine globally. This work provides the context for understanding how the spiritual conceptualizations of the African feminine divine underpin critical cultural forms, even when it has been previously unacknowledged and despite the cultural encounters with European and Western models of being. Scholars of African diaspora studies and the arts will find this book particularly interesting.

naware that hunger, sickness and deprivation were awaiting him, a young idealist leaves the United States and embarks on a spiritual journey to West Africa. Repeatedly challenged by a world beyond his understanding and thrown into harsh, critical self-reflections, he is repulsed by the image of himself that Africa forces him to confront. Road of Ash and Dust: Awakening of a Soul in Africa is a deeply intimate and, somewhat, voyeuristic unveiling of aspects of The African-American Experience rarely committed to print. ROAD allows you access to one of the most universal rites of passage, the discovery of self. Author E.L. Cyrs channels voices from a distant and muted past, guiding us into understanding that many of the answers to our most troubling questions do, truly, come from within.