Gender in Selected African Novels

Gender in Selected African Novels
Author: Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2011-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 3640990242

Scientific Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Literature - Africa, Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Brixen (none), course: Gender Studies, language: English, abstract: In its oral and written forms, literature has constantly served as one of the major instruments in mirroring reality and society. Literature remains a consistent tool in the representation, comprehension and interpretation of fields of human endeavour such as religion, class struggle, politics, human situations, social conflicts and Gender relations. No wonder then, gender relations, especially feminism has laid hold on literature as a veritable machinery for gender activism Men discovered the gold mine in literature quite early and for ages tapped its resources to carve a niche for the male gender in politics, culture and religion. At the same time the male gender used the resources of literature and criticism to invent prejudices, stereotypes and superstitious beliefs and heaped them on the female gender. While women laboured under this burden for ages, men were busy upstaging them in every field of life. Few instances have however existed where certain female figures due to their exalted royal, military, economics and cultic backgrounds have through individual efforts raised their heads above water in their respective societies and eras. Literature has equally recorded cases where powerful women in various races have astutely and subtly cornered for themselves rights and priviledges which ordinary women and even ordinary men could never dream of. Such positions were like personal identity cards which neither outlived them nor were enjoyed by other women during and after their lifetime. These examples are today literature, in history and literary achieves. [...]

Gender In Selected African Novels

Gender In Selected African Novels
Author: Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 21
Release: 2011-08-23
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3640989929

Scientific Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Literature - Africa, Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Brixen (none), course: Gender Studies, language: English, abstract: In its oral and written forms, literature has constantly served as one of the major instruments in mirroring reality and society. Literature remains a consistent tool in the representation, comprehension and interpretation of fields of human endeavour such as religion, class struggle, politics, human situations, social conflicts and Gender relations. No wonder then, gender relations, especially feminism has laid hold on literature as a veritable machinery for gender activism Men discovered the gold mine in literature quite early and for ages tapped its resources to carve a niche for the male gender in politics, culture and religion. At the same time the male gender used the resources of literature and criticism to invent prejudices, stereotypes and superstitious beliefs and heaped them on the female gender. While women laboured under this burden for ages, men were busy upstaging them in every field of life. Few instances have however existed where certain female figures due to their exalted royal, military, economics and cultic backgrounds have through individual efforts raised their heads above water in their respective societies and eras. Literature has equally recorded cases where powerful women in various races have astutely and subtly cornered for themselves rights and priviledges which ordinary women and even ordinary men could never dream of. Such positions were like personal identity cards which neither outlived them nor were enjoyed by other women during and after their lifetime. These examples are today literature, in history and literary achieves. [...]

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender
Author: Florence Stratton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2020-09-23
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000158772

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.

Readings in Gender in Africa

Readings in Gender in Africa
Author: Andrea Cornwall
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2005-02-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253217400

Readings in Gender in Africa collects the most important critical and theoretical writings on how gender issues have transformed contemporary views of Africa. Scholarship from North America, Europe, and Africa is represented in this comprehensive volume. A synthetic introduction by Andrea Cornwall discusses efforts to include women in research about Africa. The volume not only shows how gender relations have been constructed on the African continent but reflects the changes in approach and inquiry that have been brought about as scholars consider gender identities and difference in their work. Specific themes covered here include the contestation and representation of gender, femininity and masculinity, livelihoods and lifeways, gender and religion, gender and culture, and gender and governance. Readers from across the landscape of African studies will find this an essential sourcebook. Published in association with the International African Institute, London

African Literature

African Literature
Author: Safoura Salami-Boukari
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0979085853

How do we resolve the insider/outsider interpreting conundrum? Why do readers from different parts of the world read, interpret, or understand foreign literatures the way they do? What drives peculiar critical reactions, canon formations and such issues which determine the survival of cultural productions or their continued adoption as useful bolsters for a people's self-definition or indeed self-preservation and self-determination? African Literature: Gender Discourse, Religious Values, and the African Worldview offers a series of fresh insights into most of the old "problematics" which used to sustain the interpretations of African literature, especially by women. Students, scholars, and general readers wishing to consider issues of gender in relation to African cultural and socioeconomic systems and what Salami-Boukari interrogates and names as an "African worldview," will find the interdisciplinary discussion of historical analyses, literary criticism and gender discourses a useful method for engaging contemporary African perspectives.

Gender Issues in African Literature

Gender Issues in African Literature
Author: Chin Ce
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2014-04-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9783603752

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.

Male Daughters, Female Husbands

Male Daughters, Female Husbands
Author: Professor Ifi Amadiume
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783603348

In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands, to critical acclaim. This compelling and highly original book frees the subject position of 'husband' from its affiliation with men, and goes on to do the same for other masculine attributes, dislocating sex, gender and sexual orientation. Boldly arguing that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference, Male Daughters, Female Husbands examines the structures in African society that enabled people to achieve power, showing that roles were not rigidly masculinized nor feminized. At a time when gender and queer theory are viewed by some as being stuck in an identity-politics rut, this outstanding study not only warns against the danger of projecting a very specific, Western notion of difference onto other cultures, but calls us to question the very concept of gender itself.

Africa Writes Back to Self

Africa Writes Back to Self
Author: Evan M. Mwangi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2010-07-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438426976

The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

Society, Women and Literature in Africa

Society, Women and Literature in Africa
Author: Orabueze, Florence Onyebuchi
Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2016-03-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9785412792

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.

Gender Voices and Choices

Gender Voices and Choices
Author: Gloria Chineze Chukukere
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Why do we preserve certain landscapes while developing others without restraint? Drew A. Swanson's in-depth look at Wormsloe plantation, located on the salt marshes outside of Savannah, Georgia, explores that question while revealing the broad historical forces that have shaped the lowcountry South. Wormsloe is one of the most historic and ecologically significant stretches of the Georgia coast. It has remained in the hands of one family from 1736, when Georgia's Trustees granted it to Noble Jones, through the 1970s, when much of Wormsloe was ceded to Georgia for the creation of a state historic site. It has served as a guard post against aggression from Spanish Florida; a node in an emerging cotton economy connected to far-flung places like Lancashire and India; a retreat for pleasure and leisure; and a carefully maintained historic site and green space. Like many lowcountry places, Wormsloe is inextricably tied to regional, national, and global environments and is the product of transatlantic exchanges. Swanson argues that while visitors to Wormsloe value what they perceive to be an "authentic," undisturbed place, this landscape is actually the product of aggressive management over generations. He also finds that Wormsloe is an ideal place to get at hidden stories, such as African American environmental and agricultural knowledge, conceptions of health and disease, the relationship between manual labor and views of nature, and the ties between historic preservation and natural resource conservation. Remaking Wormsloe Plantation connects this distinct Georgia place to the broader world, adding depth and nuance to the understanding of our own conceptions of nature and history.