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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Rewriting history, motherhood, and rebellion: naming an African women's literary tradition
Author:Andrade, S.Z.ISNI
Year:1990
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:21
Issue:1
Pages:91-110
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:rebellions
1929
women
literature
Aba riots
Historical/Biographical
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819303
Abstract:After a few introductory notes on the place of race and gender in Eurocentric and 'Third World' literary criticisms, the author approaches African women's literary history by concentrating on an intertextual reading of women's narratives, as well as on 'real' history, in this case the 1929 Igbo Women's War in southeastern Nigeria, archivally recorded by the British as the 'Aba riots'. The narratives are Flora Nwapa's 'Efuru' (1966) and Buchi Emecheta's 'The joys of motherhood' (1979). Aim is to examine the dialogic relation between these two books: the response of one text to another and the free play of contradictions within a text. The analysis shows that the topos of rebellion links the two texts. The 'real' Igbo Women's War is sometimes absent from these texts, sometimes merely silent. The radical potential of Igbo women can be read into, and out of, these narratives. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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