Buchi Emecheta’s literary terrain is the domestic experience of the female characters, and the way in which these characters try to turn the table against the second-class and slavish status to which they are subjected either by their husbands or the male-oriented traditions. Reading Buchi Emecheta informs us of the ways fiction, especially women’s writing, plays a role in constructing a world in which women can live complete lives; a world that may provide women with opportunities for freedom, creativity, self-expression, friendship and love. Welesley Brown Lloyd believes that; “of all women writers in contemporary African literature Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria has been the most sustained and vigorous voice of direct feminist protest” (35) Buchi Emecheta’s major concern is providing a picture of the African women which is nothing to smile about. Providing the readers with the picture taken mostly from her own life she articulates the oppression, predicament and uncertainty prevailing in the lives of African women whom she refers to as “peasant women”. Besides providing a picture of the traditional African woman, Emecheta also has a keen eye in her realistic treatment of women after the country’s colonization. She shows that the identity of the postcolonial woman is fluid and displaces itself in various positions on a constantly evolving continuum. What prevails in Emecheta’s Oeuvre is generally an intense anger at the sexual discrimination at the core of the culture of her people and a concomitant contempt for the men who perpetrate it. Joya Uraizee says about her: In her writing female identity is a product of the ideological history that surrounds it, she describes female subjectivity in terms of fragmentation, displacement,... ... middle of paper ... ...2 (2004):365-373. Schneider, Gregory. “R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde” www.assosiatedcontent.com/article. Stanford Friedman, Susa. “Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies, and Geopolitical Literacy”. www. Women.it/cyberarchive/files/Stanford.htm Ure Mezu, Rose. “The Perspective of the Other: Rape and Women in Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi". Bookbird 36.1 (1998): 12-16. Ure Mezu, Rose. Buchi Emecheta's "The Bride Price" and "The Slave Girl": A Schizoanalytic Perspective. Van Judith Alan. “Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Last Political Institutions of Igbo Women”. Canadian Journal of American Studies. 28.2 (1972): 165-71. Ward, Cynthia. “What They Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and The Joys of Motherhood.” PMLA 105.1(1990): 83-97.
In the book entitled Abina and the Important Men, by Trevor R. Getz and Liz Clarke is about a woman named Abina, who wakes up one morning and decides that she wants to change the way that women are portrayed in society. Although slaves in the 19th century were considered free, women had a more difficult time achieving freedom due to, how the culture was shaped, inequality between men and women and negative effects on society as a whole. Western and African cultures believe that all women should be silent, they are not allowed to say what is on their mind. Women’s opinions didn’t matter; they were considered useless. They were accepted to be housegirls, where females had to cook, clean and nurture their children if they had any.
Brief History From the 1500s to the 1700s, African blacks, mainly from the area of West Africa (today's Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon) were shipped as slaves to North America, Brazil, and the West Indies. For them, local and tribal differences, and even varying cultural backgrounds, soon melded into one common concern: the suffering they all endured. Music, songs, and dances as well as traditional food, helped not only to uplift them but also quite unintentionally added immeasurably to the culture around them. In the approximately 300 years that blacks have made their homes in North America, the West Indies, and Brazil, their highly honed art of the cuisine so treasured and carefully transmitted to their daughters has become part of the great culinary classics of these lands. But seldom are the African blacks given that recognition.
Jeyifo, B. (1993). Okonkwo and his mother: ‘Things Fall Apart’ and issues of gender in the constitution of African postcolonial discourse. Callaloo, 16(4), 847-859 Retrieved from http://www.ucd.ie/english/articles/balzano1.htm
(Newell138).Writers like Senegalese Mariama Ba, and Nigerian Buchi Eme Their writings clearly oppose the way the female identity and issues are constructed by the male writers. This argument seems sentimental, because in the novel, he is aware of the trouble polygamy engenders (7). The problem of polygamy is also foundational in Buchi Emecheta’s
...”, in Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis, edited by Lia Litosseliti and Jane Sunderland, 2002, John Benjamins Publishing Company, UK.
Critical analysis “A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never being by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity….Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being …He is the Subject, he is the Absolute- she is the Other”. This piece of writing is taken from the book ‘Y: The Descent of Men’ by Steve Jones published in 2002, Little, Brown. This was written originally by de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, that is later elaborated both in the context and the meaning by Jones. The historical context of the writing follows the academic feminism as an interdisciplinary proposition that is deep rooted in a sort of “political reality that challenges confinement to one particular discipline”. Consequently, philosophies and principles “which developed from the 1960s onwards were shared as feminist philosophers, historians, literary therorists, anthropologists, sociologists, cultural theorists and others, engaged in a project that had a common political background – to take action against women's subordination. The genesis of fe...
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
Arguably, the effects which Europe’s global colonialism have had on women of the African diaspora can be most easily seen on the African continent. Kenyan feminist and environmental activist, Wangari Maathai, explores the legacy of colonialism and oppression in her native country through her moving 2006 memoir, Unbowed. Maathai explains that over t...
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Bastian, Misty L.. ""Vultures of the Marketplace": Southeastern Nigerian Women and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaanyi (Women's War) of 1929." Women in African Colonial Histories:. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
In Vera’s writings, it is clearly evident that women’s sexual roles are disapproved of and criticized in traditional African culture. It is crucial to understand how women were treated toward the beginning of Vera’s story line to fully interpret the theme of sex and freedom in Without a Name. Corwin Mhlahlo, author of “Advocating a Nameable Desire,” explains, “In most patriarchal societies, especially those of Africa, femal...
...er Theory complicated by post-colonial scholars and scholars of race who consider the ways gender intersects with nationalism, class, and race. As feminist critic Theresa de Lauretis suggests, “a new conception of the subject is, in fact, emerging from feminist analyses of women’s heterogeneous subjectivity and multiple identities . . . the differences among women may be better understood as differences within women.” It is important to realize that not only does feminism as a movement exist in the face of these contradictions and complications—within feminist criticism, within gender studies, within individual literary texts and within our understanding of the individual woman as a subject—but that it cannot exist without them. Perhaps, like Wonder Woman, feminist criticism remains vital because it is astonishingly diverse, open, and rigorously self-problematizing.
Chinua Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart, was based on a story and the culture in Nigeria, Western Africa. Women’s roles and responsibilities have transitioned over several of years. The book arises a situation of how the Ibo women were treated and looked upon. In the Ibo culture, the women did not only suffer a great loss of their dignity, but also their pride as women. The whole role of women in the Ibo culture is different in various ways compared to the female race in modern society. The modern society in Nigeria, women are not so powerless, and also have the opportunity to work alongside the opposite gender.
In the book Second Class Citizen, Emecheta Buchi uses gender and sexuality to express the many ways in which society treated women and the obstacles that they had to overcome. Buchi uses this book and the many issues discussed throughout the book as a tool in the argument of gender and sexuality as a social construct; however, the ways of the world and the views of society do not see how the way women were treated back then as anything but normal. Adah, the main character of the book is a child who wants a Western education but is denied the opportunity to get one because the mere fact that she is a girl and the privilege of school goes to the boys of the family even though she is the one that wants the education. The theme that is openly used throughout the book is one of vehement animosity of gender discrimination that is often found in the culture of Adah’s people. Buchi portrays the way that African women are discriminated and victimized by the men and older women in their lives.
A feminist analysis on the other hand shows that Anowa is a woman who is struggling against the 1870’s African feminist identity (the identity of weakness). The drama surrounds the story of a young woman called Anowa who disobeys her parents by marrying Kofi Ako, a man who has a reputation for indolence and migrates with him to a far place. Childless after several years of marriage, Anowa realises that Kofi had sacrificed his manhood for wealth. Upon Anowa’s realisation, Kofi in disgrace shoots himself while Anowa too drowns herself. In a postcolonial analysis of “Anowa”, we can see some evidence of colonialism.