The nation writ small : African fictions and feminisms, 1958-1988 / Susan Z. Andrade.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Andrade, Susan Z.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

African literature.

African literature--20th century--History and criticism.

African literature--Women authors.

Africa--In literature.

Africa.

Physical Description:

pages ; cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2011.

Summary:

In The Nation Writ Small, Susan Z. Andrade focuses on the work of Africa's first post-independence generation of novelists, explaining why male writers came to be seen as the voice of Africa's new nation-states, and why African women writers' commentary on national politics was overlooked. Since Africa's early female novelists tended to write about the family, while male authors often explicitly addressed national politics, it was assumed that the women writers were uninterested in the nation and the public sphere. Challenging that notion, Andrade argues that the female authors engaged national politics through allegory. In their work, the family stands for the nation; it is the nation writ small. Interpreting fiction by women, as well as several feminist male authors, she analyzes novels by Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria); novellas by Ous-mane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Aminata Sow Fall (Senegal); and bildungsromans by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Nuruddin Farah (Somalia), and Assia Djebar (Algeria) . Andrade reveals the influence of Africa's early women novelists on later generations of female authors, and she highlights the moment when African women began to write about macropolitics explicitly rather than allegorically. Book jacket.

Contents:

The joys of daughterhood : Achebe, Nwapa, Emecheta

The loved and the left : Sembne, B[MARC+92][MARC+95], Sow Fall

Bildung in formation and deformation: Dangarembga and Farah

Bildung at its boundaries: Djebar, two ways.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822348979

0822348977

9780822349211

0822349213

OCLC:

700145926