- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press (11 April 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226620859
- ISBN-13: 978-0226620855
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,541,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
This text takes a close look at eight Nigerian women writers and proposes a new vernacular theory based on their work. Flora Nwapa, Adaora Lily Ulasi, Buchi Emecheta, Funmilayo Fakunle, Ifeoma Okoye, Zaynab Alkali, Eno Obong and Simi Bedford are the writers Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi considers. African womanism, an emerging model of female discourse, is at the heart of their writing. In their work, female resistance shifts from the idea of palava, or trouble, to a focus on consensus, compromise and co-operation; it tackles sexism, totalitarianism, and ethnic prejudice. Such inclusiveness, Ogunyemi shows, stems from an emphasis on motherhood, acknowledging that everyone is a mother's child, capable of creating palava and generating a compromise. Ogunyemi uses the novels to trace a Nigerian women's literary tradition that reflects an ideology centred on children and community. Of prime importance is the paradoxical Mammywata figure, the independent, childless mother, who serves as a basis for the new woman in these novels. Ogunyemi tracks this figure through many permutations, from matriarch to exile to woman writer, her multiple personalities reflecting competing loyalties - to self and other, children and nation. Such fragmented personalities characterize the postcolonial condition in their writing. Mapping geographies of pain and endurance, the work opens a space for addressing the palava between different groups of people. This book also counters the shortcomings of prevailing "masculinist" theories of black literature in a narrative of the Nigerian world.
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First Sentence
The limited response Rhonda Cobham-Sander and I received in 1986 when, as coeditors of a special issue of Research in African Literatures, we called for papers on writings by African women was eye opening. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The limited response Rhonda Cobham-Sander and I received in 1986 when, as coeditors of a special issue of Research in African Literatures, we called for papers on writings by African women was eye opening. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The most concise book on Nigerian Woman Writers
25 Dec 2001
Format:Paperback
This book was exactly what I was looking for. This book took a really good thorough look at the other half of Nigerian novels. The side that is too often neglected: the Women. It went deep and discussed aspects of these novels that non-Nigerians and even Nigerian men are not likely to catch or know.
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