Literary Crossroads

An International Exploration of Women, Gender, and Otherhood

Foreword by Nawal El Saadawi Contributions by Mary Jane Androne, Solomon Omatsola Azumurana, Juliana Daniels, Elena Garces de Eder, Sidney Krome, Romanus Muoneke, Bayo Omolola, Chioma Opara, Irene Agunloye, Iniobong Uko, Gabriela Vlahovici-Jones Edited by Blessing Diala-Ogamba, Elaine Sykes

Publication date:

06 November 2014

Length of book:

182 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498502078

This book explores the different ways women have been liberating themselves from the shackles of patriarchy and cultural laws that inhibit their independence and freedom to show that women are also contributing meaningfully to society. Women have worked to attain freedom through speaking out, writing memoirs, fiction, plays, poetry, and essays. The creative experiences of women are captured in this book, thus fulfilling the book's aim to give women voices to air their views and show that they are effectual members of society. The book examines the roles played by patriarchy, religion, and socioeconomic and political systems that keep women to the background. It also examines the issue of education, otherhood, marginalization, cultural imposition, and the diverse positions of women in local and international affairs. The book testifies that women's literature, and the stories of women all over the world, can be appreciated and viewed from different perspectives because of the diverse cultural environment in which women find themselves. This confirms that the issue of marginalization, suppression, and oppression of women are on-going problems in different societies around the world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword.
Nawal El Saadawi
Introduction.
Blessing Diala-Ogamba and Elaine Sykes
Section I. Exploitation, Exclusion, and Quest for Selfhood
Chapter 1. Sexual and Gender Based Violence in African Women’s Writings: A Textual Study of Literary Works by Female African Writers
Juliana Daniels
Chapter 2. Dangarembga’sTambudzaiSigauke: The Education of an African Girl
Mary Jane Androne
Chapter 3. The Politics of Exclusion and the Response of El Saadawi’s Women
Iniobong Uko
Section II. Gender, Patriarchy, and Marginalization
Chapter 4. Breaking the Silence, Writing the Body
Elena Garces de Eder
Chapter 5. On Their Own Terms: Renegotiating Patriarchal Laws According to Farah’s Ebla and El Saadawi’s Firdaus
Blessing Diala-Ogamba
Chapter 6. Women at Point Zero: Oedipal Determinationin Adichie’sPurple Hibiscus, Aidoo’s Changes and Naylor’s The Women at Brewster Place
Solomon Azumurana
Section III. Masculinity and Gender Identity
Chapter 7. Faces of Cleopatra
Gabriela Vlahovici-Jones
Chapter 8. Decadent Space: Women, Language and Crime in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People
Chioma Opara
Chapter 9. Two Views on Female Characters in Eje Meji, A Yoruba Movie
Bayo Omolola
Section IV. Motherhood and Love
Chapter 10. Restaging Motherhood in African Literature: A Study of Selected Texts
Irene Salami-Agunloye
Chapter 11. Grass Splitting Stone: Suffering and the Return to Love
Sidney Krome
Chapter 12. A Call for Change: Liberation as Motif in Alice Childress’s A Hero Ain’t Nothing but aSandwich
Romanus Muoneke
Contributors
Index

Literary Crossroads is an important addition to the burgeoning body of criticism on African (and African-diaspora) women writers of fiction and film.