Writing African Women: Gender, Popular Culture and Literature in West Africa

Description

How does our understanding of Africa shift when we begin from the perspective of women? What can the African perspective offer theories of culture and of gender difference? This work, as unique and insightful today as when it was first published, brings together a wide variety of African academics and other researchers to explore the links between literature, popular culture and theories of gender. Beginning with a ground-breaking overview of African gender theory, the book goes on to analyse women's writing, uncovering the ways different writers have approached issues of female creativity and colonial history, as well as the ways in which they have subverted popular stereotypes around African women. The contributors also explore the related gender dynamics of mask performance and oral story-telling. This major analysis of gender in popular and postcolonial cultural production remains essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, cultural studies and literature.

Stephanie Newell is a professor of English at the Yale University, specialising in West African literature. Her other books include The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa (2013) and The Forger's Tale: The Search for Odeziaku (2006). Wendy Griswold is the Bergen Evans Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University. Her books include Cultures and Societies in a Changing World (new edition 2012) and Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (2000).

Clear, informed thinking about the gendered nexus of culture and power is needed more than ever. The new publication of Newell's collection is an event to be applauded, and its contents to be pondered. * Wendy Griswold, from the Foreword *