Women Writers in Francophone Africa

Description

In the rapidly growing field of African literature in French, writing by women has largely been ignored. This book, the first comprehensive study of women's writing in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, redressess the critical imbalance and celebrates the originality of this fascinating new literature. Considering questions of genre and ideology, the author highlights the tension between the individualistic act of writing and the collective tradition of African society - a tension which emerges as the key to each of the texts discussed. Focusing on four major authors - Mariama Ba, Aminata Sow Fall, Werewere Liking and Calixthe Beyala, each with an international reputation - the book uses a feminist approach to consider the duality of the African woman, who is often torn between modernity and tradition. This duality, the author suggests, is reconfigured through fictional writings which provide a space for alternative female subjectivities to emerge.

Nicki Hitchcott Lecturer in French,University of Nottingham

'Nicki Hitchcott's work has the merit of a remarkable intellectual honesty. Critical presuppositions may not be shared, but they are clearly signed and justified in a lucid fashion in the course of the study.' Etudes Litteraires Africaines '[The book] forces its readers to reassess any preconceptions they may have about women's writing and the place of women's writing in the canon. At the same time, it examines our attitudes towards Africa and African writing, making this a thought provoking and challenging work.' Francophonie 'Hitchcott's work includes an excellent bibliograhpy.' Choice 'Women Writers in Francophone Africa opens up to the English-speaking African, letting him/her get a peak into what his/her French-speaking women writers have been doing all along.' Expo Times 'By asking that her study be read as a dialogue between a Western feminist reader and the francophone voices of African femininity, Hitchcott demonstrates her receptiveness: through her capacity to listen to those voices, she has achieved admirably her stated aim.' ASCALF Bulletin 'The appraoch to this text is feminist and the author shows that, in writing, the authors concerned are articulating that which they are not free to articulate in speech; they are freeing their "unspoken selves". It is also, however, made clear that this act of writing is in itself subersive, as the women writer enter a realm of intellectual production hitherto closed to them. The ideological implications of writing in French are not ignored; rather, the author has attempted "to privalege the act of writing over the politically loaded linguistic tool with which African women's texts are written".' Forum for Modern Language Studies