We Will Be Heard!

Modern African-born women writers continue to produce sophisticated narrative art even without the attention and acclaim they deserve. Third in a continuing BIBR series about literature from the African continent.

The theme of the 1999 Zimbabwe International Book Fair, "Women's Voices, Books and Development," struck another hopeful note for women writers in Africa, many of whom remain unknown despite the global literary boom that marked the closing decades of the twentieth century. Among the consensus issues raised at the Indaba (the opening conference) and in subsequent workshops was the familiar call to combat widespread social practices that continue to stymie progress for women writers. The roster of culprits remains unchanged: publishers, critics, male writers, custom.

To weaken this ideological alignment, various speakers called for a change in the representation of women in textbooks and in literature. Rudo Gaidanwa of the University of Zimbabwe and author of Images of Women in Zimbabwean Literature, pointed to the gap between the strong character of African women in real life and the passive images of womanhood in published works. "Some of the materials existing do not depict anything women can identify with," she noted. Addressing the question of role models, South African writer, Sindiwe Magona, author of five books written within a ten-year period, declared, "If our children don't read about us, how would they want to be like us?"

The concern expressed at the book fair over the limited sphere of influence assigned to African women writers is hardly new. Women in Africa have been writing for almost as long as men have, overcoming quite significantly the colonial bias that favored the education of boys. While modern African writing of the 50s and 60s began on a small scale and was mainly produced by men (anthologized in 1969 by the late Trinidadian author, Whitney Cartner as Whispers from a Continent), women's contributions helped to animate this first wave of literary production.

Ama Ata Aidoo's play, Dilemma of a Ghost, performed at the University of Ghana in 1964 and published a year later, explored further the clash-of-cultures theme enunciated in Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), and simultaneously broke new ground by examining the complex ties between Africans and African Americans. Anticipating the cultural climate of the civil rights movement in America, Dilemma appealed to the Pan-Africanist sentiments later articulated in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

In 1966, two English-language novels by women appeared on the scene: Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Grace Ogot's The Promised Land, published in England and Nairobi, respectively. In her novel, Nwapa attempted to find a new and independent voice to express her disenchantment with Nigerian patriarchal society, but critics were either dismissive or unimpressed. As a matter of fact, the first generation of sub-Saharan women writers writing in English--Aidoo, Nwapa, Ogot, Efua Sutherland (Ghana) and Bessie Head (South Africa)--were largely ignored in the emerging African literary criticism, prompting the African American feminist critic, Roseann P. Bell to question the invisibility of African women writers in a 1977 conference paper appropriately titled "The Absence of the African Woman Writer."

In the 80s, within the framework of the international women's movement, the climate of opinion towards women writing in Africa began to change and a number of female writers rose to attention. Buchi Emecheta, a Nigerian woman living in London, made the remarkable transformation from embattled wife and ex-colonial subject to an irrepressible writer. Energized by a sense of cultural adventure in Britain, Emecheta wrote sixteen books between 1972 and 1989, including nine novels, an autobiography--Head Above Water (1986)--and literature for children. In terms of range and volume, Emecheta's artistic repertoire marked a breakthrough effort for women writers to create new canons of cultural experience that envision women as central to the work for social change in Africa.

For example, three of the novels she wrote during this period--The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979)--represent different arenas of women's struggle against hostile traditions and formidable obstacles to self-realization. In particular, The Joys of Motherhood, her most widely read novel, makes elaborately ironic the crippling despair of the childless woman in a culture that overvalues motherhood. A quiet devastation is discernible in Emecheta's work, but there is also a corresponding validation of ordinary women living heroic lives.

Destination Biafra (1983), her high-minded narrative about the Nigerian civil war, celebrates one such woman. Debbie Ogedemgbe, who casts her lot with her country's fragile prospects for ethnic unity, fights valiantly to end the war and proudly proclaims, "I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stay and mourn with her in shame."

Senegalese writer Mariama Ba also drew the adulation of readers around the world with the publication of So Long a Letter (1981), a poignant look at polygamy through women's eyes. This novel-as-letter examines the rites of courage of a woman abandoned for a much younger wife in an Islamic marriage. Writing to her friend, Ramatoulaye, the protagonist sets out on a journey toward self-healing. "I am beginning this diary, my prop in my distress. Our long association has taught me that confiding in others allays pain." To validate this hope, Ba forges a strong friendship between the two women. In their expanding view of African life, they challenge the social control of women and demystify the beliefs that exploit women's vulnerability. Ba's second book, A Scarlet Song, a novel about interracial marriage, was published in 1986 five years after her death.

Bessie Head was also a fearsome critic of the troubled political and cultural landscape. Head herself supplied the incredible facts of her life. "I was born on the sixth of July, in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital. The reason for my peculiar birthplace was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant." It was here that Betty Emery committed suicide when her daughter was only a year old.

Head grew up in the smoldering hostility of racial separation in South Africa, and after an unsuccessful marriage she left the country to settle in Botswana. Here she transformed alienation into art, creating characters that chafe under domination based on race, gender or ethnicity. But her characters are also keepers of her large agenda of "world-building" across differences.

In Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1974), her second and third novels, Head gives us a vision of human interrelatedness amid haunting images of racial and gender prejudice. Her novels, including her first, When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), and countless short stories are riveting tales of psychic trauma induced by the desire by some to dominate others. The dramatic and poetic power of her fiction has drawn critical praise and influenced such African American literary lights as Angela Carter, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Head's untimely death in April 1986, put an end to a brief but wildly accomplished career.

Few female writers developed such a dramatic profile even into the 80s, but in spite of critical neglect, African women continued to write perhaps out of what Aidoo calls a sense of "desperation" to be heard. In Kenya, Micere Mugo, Rebecca Njau, Marjorie Macgoye and Asenath Bole Odaga laid out the concerns of women and the nation in poetry, drama and fiction. However, their male compatriot, gifted writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, leapt far ahead of them in international acclaim. In West Africa, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka had become international celebrities. But if these women operated under the radar, they were not doing so in a vacuum.

In South Africa, Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo and Ellen Kuzwayo, among others, continued to write against the mounting tide of despair during the Apartheid era. In West Africa, Aminata Sow Fall (Senegal), Zaynab Alkali (Nigeria), Ken Bugul (Senegal) and Werewere Liking (Cameroon) were contributing to the evolving herstory of female creativity in Africa.

By the 90s it was clear that women writers could no longer be kept on the fringe of African literary culture. To date, international recognition has been small but significant: the Noma award for Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, the Grand Prix de Litterature de l'Afrique for The Beggars' Strike (1979), by Aminata Sow Fall; the 1992 Commonwealth Prize for Literature for Ama Ata Aidoo's novel, Changes (1991); and the 1997 Regional Commonwealth Prize for Yvonne Vera's Under the Tongue. Among critics, women writers have gone from being viewed as a collective oddity, reflected in Female Novelists of Africa (1984) by the Nigerian critic Oladele Taiwo, to being more widely seen as talented individuals who inspire more in depth study of African literature.

The distance between Lloyd Brown's pioneering text Women Writers in Black Africa (1981), an assessment of the work of five writers, to Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel By Women (1996), Chikwenye Ogunyemi's full-scale critical treatise, represents a dramatic shift in the critical attitude towards African women's literary production. The strength of the feminist dialogue among black and white American female scholars in the 80s no doubt helped to boost critical re-appraisal of Africa's writing women. Leading the way in this regard is Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature, edited by Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves. At present, African women's writing is a standard feature of global and postcolonial studies and the subject of critical inquiry by a swelling number of African-born women scholars in the West.

Currently, the Feminist Press is stepping to the forefront with the publication of the Women Writing Africa series, a multi-volume archival project aimed at recovering the lost and little known oral and written works of African women. At the thematic level these regional anthologies aim to depict women in Africa as bearers of culture and progress, rather than faithful retainers of outmoded traditions.

The years of change represent a mixed blessing for women writers in Africa. While younger writers such as Yvonne Vera (Zimbabwe) and Tess Onwueme (Nigeria) face more promising prospects than their pioneering counterparts, attaining the prominence often accorded male writers remains an elusive goal. A combined effort by publishers, critics and social systems to tap the full capacity of women's imagination is crucial.

As we move forward into the future, African women writers, and literature lovers everywhere, look toward the fulfillment of a promise of equality. It is up to writers, and readers, everywhere to raise the threshold of access and affirmation. Our own literary canons, and mindsets and viewpoints the world over, can only stand to benefit from the towering voices of African women calling out for acceptance and change.

Tuzyline Jita Allan, The author of Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Comparative Review, is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Baruch College, CUNY.