Women writers in Africa have been fewer in number, have started publishing later, and have generally received less critical attention and acclaim than their male counterparts. This is most probably due to a number of factors: limited educational opportunities for women; lack of leisure for them to devote to activities like writing; the reluctance of most African societies to accord women a visible public position. But African women's fiction that is both emotionally compelling and artistically excellent does exist. The following is a limited sampling of some of their creative work.
Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa
by Charlotte Bruner (Heinemann, London England, 1983)
A fine anthology, including representative samples of the work of a number of the best authors up to the early eighties. Interesting —if apolitical — background information about each writer and about African fiction in general.
Charting the Journey: Writings by Black and Third World Women
by Shabram Grewal et al. (Sheba Press, London, England, 1988)
An anthology of stories, essays, interviews and poems by black and Third World women living in Britian. Many of
the pieces powerfully articulate the difficulties the contemporary woman faces as she tries to negotiate between the claims of her culture —her African identity, and her aspirations for modernization.
Western Africa
Anglophone Western Africa has produced several excellent writings. Among them are Flora Nwapa's One is Enough and Buchi Emmacheta's The Joys of Motherhood —the latter, ironically titled, is about sterility. Both writers are from Nigeria. So Long a Letter, by Mariama Ba of Senegal is available in translation from Virago Press. The following are two other authors and a description of their works:
The Marriage of Anaswewa
by Efua Sutherland (Longman, London, England, 1975)
Efua Sutherland is one of the foremost poets and playwrights of Ghana. The Marriage of Anaswewa, based on a traditional folktale, is the comical story of a scheming father and his attempts to manoever several suitors to ensure a good marriage for his daughter.
Our Sister Killjoy
by AmaAtaAidoo (Longinan, London, England, 1981)
Ama Ata Aidoo is both a militant feminist and a militant Africanist. Her most famous novel. Our Sister Killjoy is aesthetically brilliant. In form it describes a circle, as it follows the travels of Sissy (Killjoy) from Africa, to a students' summer program in England and Germany and immersion in an alien culture, and finally back to Africa.
Eastern Africa
Eastern Africa is a vast and varied geographic area, and its fiction is similarly varied. Some of its best female authors include Charity Waciuma, Grace Ogot and Micere Mugo of Kenya, Barbara Kimenye of Uganda, and Hazel Mugot of the Seychelle Islands.
Island of Tears
by Grace Ogot (Uzima, Nairobi, Kenya, 1980)
Grace Ogot is perhaps the best-known writer in East Africa. She writes mostly short stories, her latest being Island of Tears.
The stories are often pseudo-myths that she has actually invented herself, and are infused with her own sense of the macabre and the particularly East African emphasis on witchcraft and magic.
North Africa
God Dies by the Nile
by Nawal El Saadawi (Zed Books, London, England, 1985)
Nawal El Saadawi, of Egypt, physician, socialist and strong advocate of women's rights, is also a writer of both non- fictional social criticism and of some superb novels. God Dies by the Nile, one of her most recent novels is the story of an old peasant and the helpless suffering she and her nieces endure at the hands of the local mayor and his cronies, until, pushed beyond endurance, she takes her fate into her own hands.
Source: Match News, Feb-Mar 1989 MATCH International Centre 1102 - 200, Elgin Ottawa, Canada