Nationhood in African Women's Writings

Fatima Bouzenirh (Mohamed V University Rabat, Morocco)

African women's writing has been criticized for being ahistorical and domestico-centric. These are some of the criteria used to justify their non-inclusion in the canon of literary tradition, which is a male directed institution. All these labels show a reductionist attitude towards African women's writings.

This paper seeks to compare two novels from two geographical areas of North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa to investigate the reliability of these images of women's production in Africa. The Moroccan Leila Abouzeid's Year of the Elephant and the Nigerian Buchi Emechetta's Destination Biafra will be discussed to argue that African women writers have engaged in challenging paths on which they are not afraid to tread.


Postcolonial OV discourseov Casablanca Conference

Last modified: 7 May 2001