Women, Literature and Development in Africa

Women, Literature and Development in Africa PDF Author: Anthonia C. Kalu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429650914
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book is a powerful exploration of the role of women in the evolution of African thinking and narratives on development, from the precolonial period right through to the modern day. Whilst the book identifies women’s oppression and marginalization as significant challenges to contemporary Africa’s advancement, it also explores how new written narratives draw on traditional African knowledge systems to bring deep-rooted and sometimes radical approaches to progress. The book asserts that Africans must tell their own stories, expressed through the complex meanings and nuances of African languages and often conveyed through oral traditions and storytelling, in which women play an important role. The book’s close examination of language and meaning in the African narrative tradition advances the illumination and elevation of African storytelling as part of a viable and valid knowledge base in its own right, rather than as an extension of European paradigms and methods. Anthonia C. Kalu's new edition of this important book, fully revised throughout, will also include fresh analysis of the role of digital media, education, and religion in African narratives. At a time when the prominence and participation of African women in development and sociopolitical debates is growing, this book's exploration of their lived experiences and narrative contribution will be of interest to students of African literature, gender studies, development, history, and sociology.

Women, Literature and Development in Africa

Women, Literature and Development in Africa PDF Author: Anthonia C. Kalu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429650914
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book

Book Description
This book is a powerful exploration of the role of women in the evolution of African thinking and narratives on development, from the precolonial period right through to the modern day. Whilst the book identifies women’s oppression and marginalization as significant challenges to contemporary Africa’s advancement, it also explores how new written narratives draw on traditional African knowledge systems to bring deep-rooted and sometimes radical approaches to progress. The book asserts that Africans must tell their own stories, expressed through the complex meanings and nuances of African languages and often conveyed through oral traditions and storytelling, in which women play an important role. The book’s close examination of language and meaning in the African narrative tradition advances the illumination and elevation of African storytelling as part of a viable and valid knowledge base in its own right, rather than as an extension of European paradigms and methods. Anthonia C. Kalu's new edition of this important book, fully revised throughout, will also include fresh analysis of the role of digital media, education, and religion in African narratives. At a time when the prominence and participation of African women in development and sociopolitical debates is growing, this book's exploration of their lived experiences and narrative contribution will be of interest to students of African literature, gender studies, development, history, and sociology.

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender PDF Author: Florence Stratton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000158772
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.

Gender in African Women's Writing

Gender in African Women's Writing PDF Author: Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253211491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
"This is a cogent analysis of the complexities of gender in the work of nine contemporary Anglophone and Francophone novelists. . . . offers illuminating interpretations of worthy writers . . . " —Multicultural Review "This book reaffirms Bessie Head's remark that books are a tool, in this case a tool that allows readers to understand better the rich lives and the condition of African women. Excellent notes and a rich bibliography." —Choice ". . . a college-level analysis which will appeal to any interested in African studies and literature." —The Bookwatch This book applies gender as a category of analysis to the works of nine sub-Saharan women writers: Aidoo, Bá, Beyala, Dangarembga, Emecheta, Head, Liking, Tlali, and Zanga Tsogo. The author appropriates western feminist theories of gender in an African literary context, and in the process, she finds and names critical theory that is African, indigenous, self-determining, which she then melds with western feminist theory and comes out with an over-arching theory that enriches western, post-colonial and African critical perspectives.

Women and Development in Africa

Women and Development in Africa PDF Author: Michael Kevane
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588262387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Kevane explores gender issues in Africa in the context of the continent's poor economic performance.

Gender Perceptions and Development in Africa

Gender Perceptions and Development in Africa PDF Author: Mary Ebun Modupe Kolawole
Publisher: Mary Kolawole Publications
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Comprises 15 papers which explore how gender perceptions shape the lives of African women. Examines gender myths and archetypes of gender in oral and written literature and looks at women's autobiographical writing and the socio-cultural, economic and environmental determinants of African women's poverty and disempowerment.

Mapping Intersections

Mapping Intersections PDF Author: African Literature Association. Meeting
Publisher: Africa World Press
ISBN: 9780865436343
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book takes on the challenge: What roles can and should African literature play in Africa's development? From a variety of critical stances and perspectives, the concepts of "literature" and of "development" are theorized, to include and extend beyond inherited concepts and boundaries in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, and thus, to engage peoples' everyday life experiences. Approaches to the question of Africa's literature and its development range from African feminism or feminist practices, to the economics and politics of public access to knowledge, information and literature, to communication networks and use of African languages in national education policies. Twenty essays constitute the volume's four parts which focus on: -- Diverse conceptualizations of African literature and development -- Critical studies of specific writers' works, linking their artistic development with issues and events of social or political development -- A philosophical consideration of the development's relationship to literature -- Models of activist pedagogy in African literature The structure of this volume is encompassed by two roundtable transcriptions with writers and critics for whom African literature and Africa's development is part of a larger struggle to create new space in which to thrive and envision new life, inside and outside the academy.

Society, Women and Literature in Africa

Society, Women and Literature in Africa PDF Author: Orabueze, Florence Onyebuchi
Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications
ISBN: 9785412792
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Society, Women and Literature in Africa explores the ideological, literary, political, cultural and ethical issues related to feminist writing. She discusses how contemporary African writers have tried to counteract men’s false assumptions about sex, love, society, fecundity and womanhood, and further details how African writers have responded to the demands of feminism. “Woman’s Cross Cultural Burden in the selected works of West African Female writers” explores the recurrent themes of motherhood, polygamy, abandonment and widowhood in the works of Nwapa, Emecheta, Alkali, Aidoo and Mariama Bâ. In “Prostitution: A Metaphor for the Degradation of Womanhood in Bode Osanyin’s the Noble Mistress”, the author approaches the subject of woman degradation in society from the perspectives of comprehensive research and an in-depth referencing. “Gendered Social Division of Labour in the African Novel” explores the theme of unfairness, of institutionalized differentiation in the African novel. It reveals the total emasculation of woman in patriarchy and her desire to be liberated from male-annexation. “The Prison World of Nigeria Woman: Female Reticence in Sefi Attah’s “Everything Good Will Come”, the author explores the dimensions of “gender silences”. She shows how woman’s voice has been stolen in patriarchy, thus rendering her a social and political mutant. “Womanhood as a Metaphor for Sexual Slavery in Nawal El Saddawi’s Woman at Point Zero” underscores that in patriarchy a woman is educated to make an object of herself for male pleasure. She is excluded from politics as a result of religion. “The Ugly Face of Ghana in the New Millennium: Alienation of Children in Amma Darko’s Faceless” is a stylistic study of the consequences of globalization in postindependent Ghana. In “The Theme of Dispossession in A.N Akwanya’s the Pilgrim Foot”, the author examines the myriad perspectives of dispossession and the dispossessor.

African Women and Development

African Women and Development PDF Author: Margaret C. Snyder
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN:
Category : Women in development
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This volume describes and assesses the development of the African Training and Research Centre for Women (ATRCW). Statistical information on health, education and employment are combined with interview material to create an understanding of the realities they face.

Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: Kathleen Sheldon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442262931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and a bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on individual African women in history, politics, religion, and the arts; on important events, organizations, and publications.

African Pasts, Presents, and Futures

African Pasts, Presents, and Futures PDF Author: Touria Khannous
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739170422
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
African Pasts, Presents, and Futures: Generational Shifts in African Women's Literature, Film, and Internet Discourse, by Touria Khannous, provides a history of African women’s cultural production, as well as an alternative approach to the arguments that have traditionally dominated post-colonial studies in general, and African and gender studies in particular. It examines some of the more overarching questions that are prevalent in the works of African women authors, who position themselves within the contexts of Islam, feminism, nationalism, modernity, and global and postcolonial politics, thus engaging in the construction of socio-political platforms for reform in their home countries. The book explores different aspects of women’s agency at the political, cultural, social, religious and aesthetic level, and highlights their civil society activism and push for legal reform. It also traces their opinions on a range of social and political questions and underscores fundamental shifts in their positions and concerns through the different generations.