AFRICA: Africa World Press Guide

compiled and edited by WorldViews

"Our problem," Adeola James writes, in her introduction to In Their Own Voices (James 1990), "is that we have listened so rarely to women's voices, the noises of men having drowned us out in every sphere of life, including the arts. Yet women to o are artists, and are endowed with a special sensitivity and compassion, necessary to creativity" (p. 2). The resource materials in this chapter introduce the rich variety of artistic works produced by African women. They bring women's voices "to the for e," in Adeola James's words, "not as a token concession, but as a moving and determining force" (ibid.).

Women's words

The voice of African women is heard through transcriptions of oral testimony, as well as through published literary works.

In Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (Abu-Lughod 1993) anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod gives women in a small Bedouin community in Egypt an opportunity to share "conversations, narratives, arguments, songs, [and] reminiscences" about marria ge, reproduction, honor, shame, and other elements of their everyday lives. Oral histories from Egypt are also featured in Khul-Khaal: Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories (Atiya 1982).

The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradition (Zenani and Scheub 1992) showcases the rich oral tradition of the Xhosa people of South Africa in the person of master storyteller and healer Nongenile Masithathu Zenan i. Professor Harold Scheub (African languages and literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison) worked with Zenani over a period of wife, and writer). "In the course of the interviews," Dr. James notes, "we discover that women writers have been no less co ncerned than men to articulate and denounce the poverty, corruption, and destructive practices that have impeded development in Africa. At the same time, women writers appear to treat more intimately the themes of love and death, transcendence and the str uggle to rise above the traditional limitations responsible for women's underdevelopment and oppression" (p. 4).

Literary works by individual African women authors are available through the African Books Collective (Oxford) and from publishers such as James Currey (London), Heinemann (Oxford and Portsmouth, N.H.), and Africa World Press (Lawrenceville, N.J.). See , especially, the African Writers series (Heinemann) and the African Women Writers series (Africa World Press).

Recommended anthologies of literature by African women are

• Anthology: Over One Hundred Works by Zimbabwe Women Writers (Kitson 1994);
• Literary works by individual African women authors are available through the African Books Collective (Oxford) and from publishers such as James Currey (London), Heinemann (Oxford and Portsmouth, N.H.), and Africa World Press (Lawrenceville, N.J.). See , especially, the African Writers series (Heinemann) and the African Women Writers series (Africa World Press).

  Recommended anthologies of literature by African women are

  • Anthology: Over One Hundred Works by Zimbabwe Women Writers (Kitson 1994);
  • Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present Busby 1992);
  • The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry (Chipasula and Chipasula 1995).
  • The Heinemann Book of African Women's Writing (Bruner 1993).
  • Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa (Bruner 1983).

  In addition there are two collections that bring together writings by Black women writers in Africa and in the Diaspora: Binding Cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora (Wilentz 1992) and Motherlands: Black Women's Writing fr om Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia (Nasta 1991).

  See also Third World Women's Literatures: A Dictionary and Guide to Materials in English (Fister 1995).

  Literary criticism

  In the published edition of her doctoral dissertation, Gender Voices and Choices: Redefining Women in Contemporary African Fiction (Chukukere 1995), Gloria Chukukere argues cogently and passionately for due recognition to be given to the enormous c ontributions that African women have made both in life and literature. Chukukere analyzes the literary works of male and female authors to make her case. Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, and Bessie Head are among the African women authors she discusses.

  Other critical studies of African women authors include

  • Africa Wo/man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (Ogunyemi 1996).
  • The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading against Neocolonialism (Odamtten 1994).
  • Bessie Head: Thunder Behind Her Ears. Her Life and Writing (Eilersen 1995)
  • Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo (Azodo and Wilentz 1997).
  • Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta (Umeh 1996).
  • Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa (Umeh 1997).
  • Gender in African Women's Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference (Mfah-Abbenyi 1997).
  • The Healing Imagination of Olive Schreiner: Beyond South African Colonialism (Berkman 1989).
  • Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (Malti-Douglas 1995).
  • Nigerian Female Writers: A Critical Perspective (Otokunefor and Nwodo 1989).
  • The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside (Clingman 1993).
  • A Poetics of Resistance: Women Writing in El Salvador, South Africa, and the United States (DeShazer 1994).

  Personal stories

  The personal stories of African women--told in autobiographies and other literary forms--offer a window on African society as seen through the eyes of women. See, for example,
  • Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl (Barnes and Boddy 1994);
  • Lives of Courage: Women for a New South Africa (Russell 1989);
  • Doria Shafik: Egyptian Feminist. A Woman Apart (Nelson 1996);
  • The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman (Bugul 1991);
  • Woman Between Two Worlds: Portrait of an Ethiopian Rural Leader (Olmstead 1997); and
  • Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman (Kendall 1997).

  Music

  The Ladyslipper music catalog is a one-stop source for recordings of music by African women vocal and instrumental artists: Ladyslipper, P.O. Box 3124, Durham, NC 27715 USA. The Ladyslipper on-line catalog is available on the Internet at http://www. ladys lipper.org. See also the catalogs of distributors listed in the music chapter in this guide.

  Visual arts

  In addition to the books by Betty LaDuke (see below), three videotapes introduce the lives and work of African women visual artists. These are:
  • African Art and Women Artists. 17-minute video from Films for the Humanities and Sciences (New Jersey);
  • The Art of the Weya Women (Noy 1992);
  • Batiks by Nike, a companion video to the book The Woman with the Artistic Brush: A Life History of Yoruba Batik Artist Nike Davies (Vaz 1995) from University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida).

  African Women Artists

  Artist, critic, and educator Betty LaDuke has compiled two illustrated books that showcase the artistic achievements of women throughout the African continent and in the Diaspora.

  In Africa through the Eyes of Women Artists (LaDuke 1991) LaDuke interviews the artists and presents representative selections from their works. Women from Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, and other areas, are repres ented.

  "The art expression of the twelve women artists," LaDuke notes, "contains a variety of images and themes that reveal multifacted roles within contemporary African society....Their art is composed of intimate and universal themes that touch upon all our lives and expand our vision of humanity" (p. 1).

  Africa: Women's Art, Women's Lives (LaDuke 1997) grew out of LaDuke's visits to Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea, from 1990 to 1994. LaDuke concludes that whether women in these countries weave, sew, sketch, paint, creat e fabric applique or stone sculptures, their art work often incorporates the duality of myth and reality as the women artists express their hopes, fears, humor, and frustrations.

  A Poem: "Independence"

  Independence
  
  When I got home 
  from the war 
  I realised 
  our tradition had not changed 
  We were still second to men 
  being told 
  what to do 
  
  We had to wash 
  and to cook 
  and to clean the house 
  we had to bear a child every year 
  
  When I risked my life 
  during the war 
  I thought
  liberation 
  was meant for men and women 
  
  Indeed
  we got rid of the white oppressor 
  but today I see 
  we women are still not free 
  
  But as a person cannot walk 
  with only one leg 
  this country cannot develop 
  without us!
  
  We are Zimbabwe's other leg 
  we are needed oh yes, we are! 
  
  Equality
  Dignity
  and love
  
  Equality!
  

  Credit: Danhiko Women's Group (Zimbabwe)
  Courtesy: IDEX Update, International Development Exchange (San Francisco)

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