Cultural Inhibitions As Threat to Advancement of African Women: The Case of Mariama Ba’s ‘So Long a Letter’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chijioke Agbasiere
Keyword(s):  
African Women ◽  
So Long A Letter

scholarly journals Technique of Exploring Women’s Choice in Select Novels of El Sadaawi, Ba, Alkali and Adichie

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Angela Ngozi Dick
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
African Women ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
African Society ◽  
Mariama Ba ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
African Women Writers ◽  
Higher Institutions ◽  
So Long A Letter

Women writers in Africa have enjoyed wider audience especially in higher institutions where the curriculum includes African Women Writers, Gender Studies and other related courses. African women writers may focus on a variety of subject matters but what is common to their literary art is that they concentrate on the experience of women. This article focuses on how the authors use their literary art to portray women’s experiences in their social melieu.  Nawal El Sadaawi, Mariama Ba, Zaynab Alkali and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are women writers from Africa. The first three women are older and from Moslem background. Adichie is younger and from a Christian background. The choice made of the novels of these women is due to the recurrent problem of being a woman everywhere. In contemporary times women are still treated differently just because they are women. However, it has been observed that there is nothing intrinsic in women that depict them as the bad or inferior species of human beings. This article focuses on the commonality of style used by the select African novelists in couching the predicament of women in the African society. The novels chosen in this research are El Sadaawi’s  Woman at Point Zero and God Dies by the Nile; Ba’s So Long a Letter and Scarlet Song; Alkali’s The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman and  Adichie’s Americanah.

scholarly journals A Marxist Reading of Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Hamzat Abdulkadir
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
African Women ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
So Long A Letter

This work examines Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter from a Marxist perspective. It explores the radical and feminist tendencies on the stereotype of African women with the awareness that women are equal with men without prejudice to the interpretation of the theory of creation. Based on Marxist theoretical framework, our analysis shows that the oppression and exploitation of women is a process involving women themselves. The woman, in effect, continually reproduces the conditions of her subservience as Marx will add, through alienation, competition, rivalry and docility. Through alienation, women forfeit their rights to be the initiators and controllers of their historical processes. The study concludes that Marxist Feminist must practically engage in struggle against inequality and all manifestations of oppression and exploitation of women.

THE SINS OF THE FATHER: GENDER- BASED VIOLENCE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
African Women ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
South African Women

This article explores the complexities of gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa and interrogates the socio-political issues at the intersection of class, ‘race’ and gender, which impact South African women. Gender equality is up against a powerful enemy in societies with strong patriarchal traditions such as South Africa, where women of all ‘races’ and cultures have been oppressed, exploited and kept in positions of subservience for generations. In South Africa, where sexism and racism intersect, black women as a group have suffered the major brunt of this discrimination and are at the receiving end of extreme violence. South Africa’s gender-based violence is fuelled historically by the ideologies of apartheid (racism) and patriarchy (sexism), which are symbiotically premised on systemic humiliation that devalues and debases whole groups of people and renders them inferior. It is further argued that the current neo-patriarchal backlash in South Africa foments and sustains the subjugation of women and casts them as both victims and perpetuators of pervasive patriarchal values.

AFRICAN WOMEN AND FORBIDDEN GROUNDS: FEMALE SEXUALITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN AFRICAN LITERATURE

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
African Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Sexual Repression

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.

Teaching African Women in Cinema: Part Two

Black Camera ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellerson
Keyword(s):  
African Women ◽  
Women In Cinema
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