African Women Writers and the Politics of Gender

Sadia Zulfiqar (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

230 Seiten

2016 | Unabridged edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-4438-9747-1 (ISBN)

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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.

Sadia Zulfiqar completed her MLitt in Modernities (Modern and Post-modern Literature) and PhD in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her publications include Islam and the West: A Love Story?. She is currently teaching African women's writings, 20th century fiction and non-fiction, and postcolonial writings at Lahore College for Women University, Pakistan.

Erscheinungsdatum	07.11.2016
Verlagsort	Newcastle upon Tyne
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 212 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-4438-9747-7 / 1443897477
ISBN-13	978-1-4438-9747-1 / 9781443897471
Zustand	Neuware