scholarly journals Women, protest and social change in Julie Okoh’s Edewede

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Margaret Fafa Nutsukpo
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Radical Feminism ◽  
African Women ◽  
African Society ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
African Women Writers

The 21st century African society is rife with oppressive and retrogressive customs and values that oppress and subjugate women. As a result, African women writers have embraced literary forms and subjects that highlight these issues and advocate for their elimination from society. Among these writers is Julie Okoh, a playwright, who projects her concerns about the dangers of female circumcision in her play, Edewede. Using feminism as a theoretical framework, this article interrogates Okoh’s adoption of the principles of two opposing feminist perspectives─African and radical feminism─with a view to revealing their impact in rousing her female characters from subservience, ignorance and passivity, to revolt against their oppression through social protest. It is discovered that education, consciousness-raising, sisterhood, female solidarity and resilience are powerful tools for women’s empowerment in the play. It is recommended that women should not be context bound in their choice and expression of feminist perspectives, strategies or weapons in the fight against gender inequality, oppression and exploitation; they should be open to contemporary avenues and progressive choices that will pave the way to their emancipation and social change.

scholarly journals Feminism in Africa and African Women’s Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Margaret Fafa Nutsukpo
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Key Words ◽  
African Women ◽  
African Society ◽  
The West ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
African Women Writers ◽  
Remarkable Progress ◽  
Made In

Feminism developed out of the discontents of women in the West. Although African women, over the ages, have always been sensitive to all forms of discrimination within the African society, the emergence of feminism and feminist consciousness-raising awakened in them a new awareness of their oppression through the inequalities in society, reinforced by patriarchal tradition and culture. Many African women have aligned themselves with feminism and the feminist cause and, despite all odds have made remarkable progress in their lives and society and gained respectable acceptance and recognition from even the most stubborn reluctance of male domination. This trend has been captured by African women writers in their literary works which reflect the progress African women have made in transitioning from the margin to the centre and their contributions to social change. Key Words: Feminism, Africa, patriarchy, African women, consciousness-raising, change

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 Virginia Woolf’s Representation of Women: A Feminist Reading of “The Legacy”

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Hussien AlGweirien
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Intellectual Ability ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Women's Identity ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

Over the centuries women have been struggling to gain recognition, calling their independent voice to be heard in patriarchal and racist societies. As they follow the standards and the values of their societies, women tend to break the stereotypical and submissive images that degrade their position in their societies. Thus, this paper will scrutinize thoroughly women’s intellectual ability from a Gynocriticism perspective taking Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Legacy” (published posthously in 1944) as an example. The present paper provides an analytical view of the four models of gynocriticism; i.e., biological, linguistic, cultural, and psychological. It also attempts to shed light on some common feminist themes such as the theme of marriage and how oppressed marriage motivates male dominance. The paper addresses the relationship between wife and husband in terms of gender inequality and women’s identity. It also tackles women’s trapped position as distinct from the liberty of men and oppressed by husband in an unhappy marriage. It relies heavily not only on feminist perspectives as gynocriticism, gender inequality, and the theme of marriage; but also on the authors’ personal life. The paper concludes that being unable to speak their voice freely, women view writing as their salvation for their voice to be heard.

scholarly journals Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Countercontrol: Offensive Humor in Mediated Social Protest

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-193
Author(s):  
Anne Graefer ◽  
Allaina Kilby ◽  
Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
And Behavior

At the Women’s March in January 2018, many protest posters featured offensive jokes at the expense of Trump’s body and behavior. Such posters were shared widely online, much to the amusement of the movement’s supporters. Through a close analysis of posts on Instagram and Twitter, we explore the role of “vulgar” and “offensive” humor in mediated social protest. By highlighting its radical and conservative tendencies, we demonstrate how we can understand these practices of offensive humor as a contemporary expression of “the carnivalesque” that is complexly intertwined with social change.

scholarly journals Impact of Christianity on African Women in Buchi Emecheta’s Novels

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Longjam Bedana ◽  
Sangeeta Laishram ◽  
Moirangthem Priyobrata Singh
Keyword(s):  
African Women ◽  
African Woman ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
African Society ◽  
Buchi Emecheta ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Bride Price ◽  
The Impact

The African society is one of the societies with rich culture and traditions. Apart from the indigenous religion of Africa, Christianity and Islam are worshiped as the major religions of the African society. Literature reflects a great amount of influence of religions on the existing societies, people and cultures. African literature often mirrors the clash of indigenous religion with Christianity. In the writings of African authors one can find the elements of Christian beliefs and practices. The present paper, however, is focused on the African woman novelist Buchi Emecheta’s selected four novels: Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave-Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). The paper attempts to discuss the impact of Christianity on the social and cultural aspects of the African society with special focus on African women. The findings reveal the positive as well as negative impacts of the new religion on African people and on the position of African women through the characters present in the selected novels. With the medium of writing and through Christianity, Emecheta seek to educate her society and improve upon the position of the African women.

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.

Women Entrepreneurs Address Poverty and Social Change Through Empowering Grassroots Initiatives in Tanzania

2019 ◽  
pp. 1371-1388
Author(s):  
Ladislaus M. Semali
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Women Entrepreneurs ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Grassroots Level

This chapter investigates the story of Jitahidi women in Tanzania to understand the dynamics of empowerment at the grassroots level. The stories chronicled in this chapter present self-reliance events, motivations, and practical initiatives of a small entrepreneurial group of women, organized with shoe-string budgets. Their goal was to establish a women's collective strength that could unleash women's lives from oppressive economic regimes, patriarchal traditions, gender inequality, gender discrimination, and socio-historical legacies that exploit women everywhere. The study revealed that dialogical way of thinking and underlying conventions wrapped-up in Women in Development activities in Tanzania were critical in providing the vision that guided the Jitahidi group to create a space for transformation and potential to empower women so as to define their own educational needs and create political organizations within the local community.

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