Female Bildungsroman in the Narrative of African Women Writers

2021 ◽  
pp. 01-11
Author(s):  
Mansour GUEYE,
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
African Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Physical Transformation ◽  
Female Bildungsroman ◽  
African Women Writers ◽  
Female Characterization ◽  
Shed Light

This paper addresses the ‘Bildungsroman’ genre in African postcolonial narratives. It mainly focuses on African women writers’ literary works and, specifically, aims to shed light on how they blend female subjugation with an unknown genre in the narrative of female characterization and autobiographies. The study also evidences that, even though, the term ‘Bildungsroman’ is German in origin, i.e., ‘bildung’, which means apprenticeship, self-cultivation, formation, etc; and the word ‘roman’ which means novel, the concept is fully adapted and adopted in African male and female writers’ literary discourses. Thus the paper seeks to demonstrate that colonization in Africa has had intellectual impacts on modern African literature, as the pioneers of contemporary African literature have used foreign languages to write back, claim cultural retrieval, independence and represent their own experience through their own perspective and narrative in the midst of their protagonists’ psychological and physical transformation.

scholarly journals African Feminisms: Paradigms, Problems and Prospects

Feminismo/s ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
African Literature ◽  
African Women ◽  
African Women Writers

African feminisms comprise the differing brands of equalist theories and efforts geared towards enhancing the condition of woman. However, the meaning and application of the word ‘feminism’ poses several problems for African women writers and critics many of whom distance themselves from the movement. Their indifference stems from the anti-men/anti-religion status accorded feminism in recent times. Thus, several women writers have sought to re-theorize feminism in a manner that fittingly captures their socio-cultural beliefs, leading to multiple feminisms in African literature. This study critically analyzes the mainstream theories of feminisms in Africa with a view to unravelling the contradictions inherent in the ongoing efforts at conceptualizing African feminisms. The paper further argues for workable ways of practicing African feminisms to serve practical benefits for African man and woman, and to also function as an appropriate tool for assessing works by literary writers in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general.

Kenya Colony and the Kenya Novel: The East African Heritage of “A Very Fine Negress” in A Room of One’s Own

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Dubino
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
African Women ◽  
East African ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
The People ◽  
African Women Writers ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Isak Dinesen

‘It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.’ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own At the time Virginia Woolf’s narrator made this observation in the late 1920s, a number of her British and other European contemporary women writers were in fact passing by and indeed living among black women in one of Great Britain’s colonies, Kenya. Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) was among the most famous, and her memoir Out of Africa (1937), commemorates her years on a Kenyan plantation (1914-1931). Along with the canonical Danish Dinesen were British women whose work has been long forgotten, including Nora K. Strange (1884-1974) and Florence Riddell (1885-1960), both of whom wrote what is called the “Kenya Novel.” The Kenya Novel is a subgenre of romantic fiction set in the white highlands of Britain’s Crown Colony Kenya. The titles alone—e.g., Kenya Calling (1928) and Courtship in Kenya (1932) by Strange, and Kismet in Kenya (1927) and Castles in Kenya (1929) by Riddell—give a flavor of their content. Because these novels were popular in Britain, it is very likely that Woolf knew about them, but she does not refer to them in her diaries, letters, or published writing. Even so, it would be worth testing this famous comment by a Room’s narrator about (white) women’s lack of propensity to recreate others in her own image, or more specifically, to dominate the colonial other. How do Woolf’s white contemporaries, living in Kenya, represent black women? Given that Strange and Riddell were part of the settler class, we can expect that their views reflect dominant colonial ideology. The formulaic nature of the Kenya Novel, and its focus on the lives of white settlers, also mean that the portrayal of the lives of the people whose lands were brutally expropriated would hardly be treated with respect or as little more than backdrops. Yet it is important to understand these other global contexts in which Woolf is working and the role that some of her contemporary women writers played in the shaping of them. This paper concludes with an overview of the separate legacies of Woolf and her fellow Anglo-African women writers up to the present day.

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 “The Joys of Motherhood” of an African Woman: A Mirage

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1167-1169
Author(s):  
Siva R, Et. al.
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Western Country ◽  
African Women ◽  
African Woman ◽  
Buchi Emecheta ◽  
African Context ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
African Women Writers ◽  
Strong Woman

Quest for identity is one phenomenon of postcolonialism that led way for the emergence of Women writers portraying the indigenous women of their society who were denied the authorial voice in the male-dominated society. Africa African woman literature has always been discussed elaborately not only among ‘White’ but also among fellow African women writers and critics across the globe. Emecheta was one such writer whose work has been criticized for writing after settled in the western country, UK (the colonizer). The readers from third world nations may agree with Emecheta’s call for the necessity to redefine Women’s identity under the African identity. Buchi Emecheta to that reverence has always through her strong woman characters never failed to express the state of the African women and their limitations in social life. Emecheta has always recorded her protagonists' struggle for equality in a male-dominated society. Through the study of her novel The Joys of Motherhood, an attempt is made to explore her perception of Motherhood and explain how she portrays it to the African context where traditions and communal ties are deeply rooted in the Nigerian Ibo society.  

A Preliminary Checklist of East African Women Writers

Matatu ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 15-16 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-244
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE MATZKE
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
African Women ◽  
East African ◽  
African Women Writers
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