Rising anthills : African and African American writing on female genital excision, 1960-2000 / Elisabeth Bekers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

1971- Bekers.

Contributor:

Elisabeth.

Series:

Women in Africa and the diaspora.

Women in Africa and the diaspora

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Female genital mutilation in literature.

Women in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 p.)

Edition:

1版.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Female genital excision, or the ritual of cutting the external genitals of girls and women, is undoubtedly one of the most heavily and widely debated cultural traditions of our time. By looking at how writers of African descent have presented the practice in their literary work, Elisabeth Bekers shows how the debate on female genital excision evolved over the last four decades of the twentieth century, in response to changing attitudes about ethnicity, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, and human rights. Rising Anthills (the title refers to a Dogon myth) analyzes works in English, French, and Arabic by African and African American writers, both women and men, from different parts of the African continent and the diaspora. Attending closely to the nuances of language and the complexities of the issue, Bekers explores lesser-known writers side by side with such recognizable names as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Flora Nwapa, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahmadou Kourouma, Calixthe Beyala, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor. Following their literary discussions of female genital excision, she discerns a gradual evolution--from the 1960s, when writers mindful of its communal significance carefully "wrote around" the physical operation, through the 1970s and 1980s, when they began to speak out against the practice and their societies' gender politics, to the late 1990s, when they situated their denunciations of female genital excision in a much broader, international context of women's oppression and the struggle for women's rights.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

Analyzed Works

Introduction: Writing Women's Rites and Rights

Chapter 1: Denunciations of Colonization and Hesitant Feminist Criticism in Early Literary"Circumscriptions" of Female Genital Excision (1963-1974)

Chapter 2: Growing Feminist Disenchantment in Literary Explorations of Female Genital Excision around the UN Decade for Women

Chapter 3: The Globalization of the Literary Debate on Female Genital Excision at the Close of the Twentieth Century (1982-1998)

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612622878

9781282622876

1282622870

9780299234935

0299234932

OCLC:

646068544