The Heinemann Book Of African Womens Writing

A contemporary selection of 22 African women's shortstories that vividly portray the everyday concerns of women's lives. The stories, divided into sections from north, south, east and west, cover such themes as the exploitation of serving girls, the experience of women behind veils, enduring friendships, the achievement of social power, independence of thought, and the affirmation of personal identity. These are new writers recording the new Africa with a fresh perspective. Authors whose stories are included in this landmark collection are: Northern Africa -- Nawal El Saadawi Assia Djebar Gisele Halimi Leila Sebbar Andree Chedid Southern Africa -- Tsitsi Dangarembga Bessie Head Jean Marquard Zoe Wicomb Sheila Fugard Farida Karodia Eastern Africa -- Evelyn Awuor Ayodo Violet Dias Lannoy Daisy Kabaragama Lina Magaia Western Africa -- Catherine Obianuju Acholonu Ifeoma Okoye Zaynab Alkali Orlanda Amarilis Aminata Maiga Ka

This first major anthology of African women's poetry offers an extensive selection of poetry by women all over the African continent.

This anthology represents some of the best African poetry written in English in the last 30 years. The poets include Wole Soyinka, Dennis Brutus, Kojo Laing, Chenjerai Hove and Gabriel Gbadamosi.

In this anthology the award-winning author Yvonne Vera brings together the stories of many talented writers from different parts of Africa.

"... a refreshing, thoughtful, critical map of this otherwise difficult battleground." -- Yale Review of Books "The essays... provide a powerful response to current conservative attacks on women's studies, feminist scholarship, and academic inquiry that foregrounds race, gender, and class." -- The Minnesota Review In the Canon's Mouth brings together two decades of writing by Lillian Robinson -- one of the pioneers of the "culture wars." Curriculum reform, changing the canon, multiculturalism, feminism, and political correctness: these issues have multiple labels, bestowed on different sides of a debate that began in the academy but that has become a matter of civic interest. Most of the well known books on these issues -- including bestsellers by Alan Bloom and Dinesh d'Souza -- come from the far right. They claim that feminists and cultural critics such as Lillian Robinson have taken over our universities. Robinson counters that the right is so frightened at losing its strangle-hold on the culture that it misrepresents a foothold as hegemony.

"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.

A collection of 20 stories written between 1980-1991 which deal with themes relevant to various regions of Africa.

African Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the Twenty-First Century examines contemporary fiction by African women authors to resonate diaspora perspectives on what it means to be African within transnational spaces. Through a critical lens, the collection interrogates the ways in which women construct new ways of telling the African story in the global age of social, economic, and political transformation. African Women Writing Diaspora illustrates that for African women, life in the diaspora is an uncharted journey across new landscapes of identity beyond Africa’s borders as a unifying theme. The fictional works analyzed represent the leading women writers who dominate the African literary canon, and the contributors explore diverse themes of immigrant life, racialized identities, and otherness within transnational spaces of the west.

African Women Writing Resistance is the first transnational anthology to focus on women’s strategies of resistance to the challenges they face in Africa today. The anthology brings together personal narratives, testimony, interviews, short stories, poetry, performance scripts, folktales, and lyrics. Thematically organized, it presents women’s writing on such issues as intertribal and interethnic conflicts, the degradation of the environment, polygamy, domestic abuse, the controversial traditional practice of female genital cutting, Sharia law, intergenerational tensions, and emigration and exile. Contributors include internationally recognized authors and activists such as Wangari Maathai and Nawal El Saadawi, as well as a host of vibrant new voices from all over the African continent and from the African diaspora. Interdisciplinary in scope, this collection provides an excellent introduction to contemporary African women’s literature and highlights social issues that are particular to Africa but are also of worldwide concern. It is an essential reference for students of African studies, world literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and women’s studies. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association Best Books for High Schools, Best Books for Special Interests, and Best Books for Professional Use, selected by the American Association of School Libraries