Widows in African Societies

Widows in African Societies
Author: Betty Potash
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1986-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804766568

Although widows constitute a quarter of the adult female population in many African societies, they have not been the focus of detailed, cross-cultural research. This is the first comparative anthropological study of widowhood in Africa, comprising ten case studies that cover a broad spectrum of societies in different parts of the continent. This volume shows clearly that widows are not passive objects of male transactions; they have interests and options, and make choices affecting their own lives. Ties to children, access to productive sources, and rights to housing are shown to have particular importance for widows' residential and marital decisions. This book provides a needed corrective both to the male perspective on kinship and to women's studies that deal almost exclusively with the adult married woman. In contrast to the traditional anthropological emphasis on widow remarriage and the functions such marriages have for the maintenance of marriage alliances, these papers deal with the women themselves and the quality of their lives. The introduction surveys the literature, examines the factors affecting the widows' strategies, and shows how accepted anthropological concepts of marriage, affinity, and community look different when considered from the perspective of widows. There is a foreword by Mariam K. Slater.

The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies

The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies
Author: Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783030280987

This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.

A Cowrie of Hope

A Cowrie of Hope
Author: Binwell Sinyangwe
Publisher: Heinemann
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780435912024

This reimagining of the Robin Hood legend tells the story of the young boy behind the bandit hero's rise to fame. Will Shackley is the son of a lord, and though just thirteen, he's led a charmed, protected life and is the heir to Shackley House, while his father is away on the Third Crusade with King Richard the Lionheart. But with King Richard's absence, the winds of treason are blowing across England, and soon Shackley House becomes caught up in a dangerous power struggle that drives Will out of the only home he's ever known. Alone, he flees into the dangerous Sherwood Forest, where he joins an elusive gang of bandits readers will immediately recognize. How Will helps a drunkard named Rob become one of the most feared and revered criminals in history is a swashbuckling ride perfect for anyone who loves heroes, villains, and adventure. From the Hardcover edition.

Praisesong for the Widow

Praisesong for the Widow
Author: Paule Marshall
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 257
Release: 1984-04-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0452267110

From the acclaimed author of Daughters and Brown Girl, Brownstones comes a “work of exceptional wisdom, maturity, and generosity, one in which the palpable humanity of its characters transcends any considerations of race or sex”(Washington Post Book World). Avey Johnson—a black, middle-aged, middle-class widow given to hats, gloves, and pearls—has long since put behind her the Harlem of her childhood. Then on a cruise to the Caribbean with two friends, inspired by a troubling dream, she senses her life beginning to unravel—and in a panic packs her bag in the middle of the night and abandons her friends at the next port of call. The unexpected and beautiful adventure that follows provides Avey with the links to the culture and history she has so long disavowed. “Astonishingly moving.”—Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review

Widows in European Economy and Society, 1600-1920

Widows in European Economy and Society, 1600-1920
Author: Beatrice Moring
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781783271771

A deeply researched and geographically wide-ranging study that reveals that widows were much more economically and socially active than is often thought.

Masterful Women

Masterful Women
Author: Kirsten E. Wood
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2005-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807863777

Many early-nineteenth-century slaveholders considered themselves "masters" not only over slaves, but also over the institutions of marriage and family. According to many historians, the privilege of mastery was reserved for white males. But as many as one in ten slaveholders--sometimes more--was a widow, and as Kirsten E. Wood demonstrates, slaveholding widows between the American Revolution and the Civil War developed their own version of mastery. Because their husbands' wills and dower law often gave women authority over entire households, widowhood expanded both their domestic mandate and their public profile. They wielded direct power not only over slaves and children but also over white men--particularly sons, overseers, and debtors. After the Revolution, southern white men frequently regarded powerful widows as direct threats to their manhood and thus to the social order. By the antebellum decades, however, these women found support among male slaveholders who resisted the popular claim that all white men were by nature equal, regardless of wealth. Slaveholding widows enjoyed material, legal, and cultural resources to which most other southerners could only aspire. The ways in which they did--and did not--translate those resources into social, political, and economic power shed new light on the evolution of slaveholding society.

Lonely Days

Lonely Days
Author: 'Bayo Adebowale
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2006
Genre: Nigeria
ISBN:

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.

Worries of the Heart

Worries of the Heart
Author: Kenda Mutongi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2007-09
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0226554198

Publisher description

Co-wives, Co-widows

Co-wives, Co-widows
Author: Adrienne Yabouza
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1912868857

'At 49, Lidou is in his prime, a prosperous builder of houses in the Central African Republic and the proud husband of two beautiful wives, Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou. The only cloud on his horizon is the recent onset of impotence, for which he persuades a pharmacist friend to get him some pills. The day after his first dose, Lidou has a heart attack and drops dead, which gives his opportunistic cousin Zouaboua the chance to accuse the two newly-widowed women of poisoning Lidou, so that he can snatch his cousin’s property out from under their noses. If they’re going to keep what’s rightfully theirs, Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou must fight with all their might against a backdrop of corruption in which bribery oils the wheels of society, eroding decency and loyalty. It’s a weighty topic in many ways, but Adrienne Yabouza writes so lightly and colourfully that this is a delight to read.' Alastair Mabbott in The Herald