"This is a generation of writers who are amoebic, occupying several spaces at once and being very comfortable doing that." – Chika Unigwe "Writing (fiction) isn’t about whitewashing the truth, or about showing only what makes us comfortable. Fiction should disturb us." – Chika Unigwe
"My revolution continues so long the world is full of violence, injustices, and lies. If I repress my revolution I feel suffocated. If I do not rebel against injustices I feel I am dying. I am surrounded by young women and men wherever I go in Egypt or in different countries. Many of them read my books and they encourage me to continue my work by saying: “your books changed our lives.” This is the real prize in my life which regenerates my energy and courage." – Nawal El Saadawi
In this paper I closely analyze the understanding of motherhood as found in the work of Nigerian sociologist Oyeronke Oyĕwumi, and place her in dialogue with Belgian feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. I make the point that the dialogue between Irigaray and Oyĕwumi shows that Oyĕwumi’s understanding of motherhood is rooted in a different metaphysical understanding of subjectivity as that which underpins the theorizations of motherhood in dominant strands of Western feminist philosophy. The implication would be that in order to really understand the notion of motherhood as posited by Oyĕwumi, one cannot approach it on the basis of the same assumptions that underlie our interpretations of dominant Western feminist theories about motherhood. I show how in the work of Oyĕwumi the mother is a figure through which the dichotomies central to the colonial/modern gender system and dominant Western thought (body/mind, immanence/transcendence, nature/culture etc.) are deconstructed in striking and powerful ways. I show how Irigaray, as a dissident voice in Western feminist thought, makes claims that are comparable to Oyĕwumi’s claims. Both of them are looking to articulate a position beyond Western metaphysics and both of them stand critical towards those dominant strands in Western feminist thought which uncritically work within the exclusionary or sacrificial logic of Western metaphysics. However, I also argue that Oyĕwumi’s work can be interpreted to highlight the ways in which Irigaray fails to move beyond Western metaphysics. In my analysis I therefore, among other things, try to show the potential for new meaning and understanding that can be unlocked in engaging Western and African feminist scholars in dialogue.
This article assesses whether a culturally tailored diabetes prevention intervention improved the knowledge and changed the perception on diabetes, healthy eating, and physical activity among a group of Somali women in Mankato, South-central Minnesota. Five Somali women participated in all phases of the project which included educational and group discussion meetings. A mixed methods approach was utilized with data collected using pretest/posttest surveys and content analysis of focus group discussion. The average score for pretest surveys was 4.01 (SD=0.8) and for posttest survey 4.08 (SD=1.1) showing a slight overall change in diabetes knowledge and attitudes. Key themes emerged from the group discussions including: inadequate diabetes knowledge and attitudes prior to the intervention, inadequate knowledge of the risks of diabetes, lack of knowledge about the impact of lifestyle, diet, and exercise on diabetes risk, barriers to a healthy lifestyle, the value of group support, the benefits of a culturally tailored program, identifying readiness for change and intent to share knowledge with family and the community. While the quantitative findings cannot demonstrate a statistically significant change due to a small sample size, the qualitative data and project results have implications for health care providers and the design of education program, particularly the role that culturally tailored interventions may play in improving the health outcomes of culturally diverse populations.
Difficult to breakdown—art for me is like breath. Necessary for living and thinking. – Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor I wanted to honor the lives of some of our exquisite citizens, professionals, dreamers who are forced to flee their lives and are turned into nothing among a people who do not even wish to know what their names are. – Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Lusaka has a powerfully cosmopolitan strain. My sense of being mixed race really only came to the fore when we moved to the United States, where the black and white logic of racial politics almost immediately imposed a crisis of identity. – Namwali Serpell
was born the first child of struggling teenage-parent-squatters in tumbledown Isale Eko, Old Lagos, Nigeria. From the time I was four years old, my young father ‘deposited’ Mama with my two siblings and me at his parents in the delta village, before he escaped by boat to England to study law. – Tess Onwueme The triumph of stumbling, falling, surviving, living, and rising through it all, not only prods me on, but also assures that I stand, tall; even taller than I am––striding high with my life’s calabash-full of water balanced on my head (and no shaking!); knowing that with the healing grace of the Almighty, I have been through so many thorny hills and valleys before. – Tess Onwueme
watch, listen and obsess about characters so much that I dream about them. I don’t think about why I end up telling a particular story. I do think of myself as a custodian of stories, which gives me a responsibility to take care of them and my characters while I am writing. – Sefi Atta
If you want to find your own voice, listen to yourself. Listen to the range of voice inside your head and your soul, down to the smallest. Do not be afraid. Your true voice will emerge. Often it develops as those voices begin to take your commands rather than the other way round. Sometimes the delight is in realizing one does not have a single true voice, but a range of them. – Tsitsi Dangarembga It is a trend in my life that positive outcomes have generally taken a long time to mature. This has been frustrating, but also good, as I believe I am being taught patience. – Tsitsi Dangarembga
If one were to take the films La Haine (1995), Kids (1995), Pariah (2011) and add dashes of The Wire (2002-2008), Langston Hughes' poem Dream Deferred and a music video, one would have a reasonable approximation of what Celine Sciamma's 2014 film Girlhood offers by way of depicting young Black and female in contemporary France. Set in the contemporary suburbs of Paris, Girlhood follows the choices of sixteen year old, Marieme (Karidja Toure) as she threads her way through the last moments of her childhood. Allied with her crew of home girls, Marieme lives the tensions of young Black life on the margins of French society.
Early in Yaba Badoe’s documentary, The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo, the titular subject, Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo states, “Once I became aware of myself, it occurred to me that, I should add to the world’s store of stories.” Ostensibly Badoe’s film reveals the workings of the mind that created classic plays and novels such as Anowa and No Sweetness Here. Arranged with the accouterment that documentaries on noted scholars and artists normally contain, the critics and scholars present their arguments on the merits of Aidoo’s works.
“Narrating Political Lives†examines how South African women’s personal stories become part of their politics and how activism influences their personal lives by analyzing memoirs of four anti-apartheid activists: Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman (1985), Frances Baard’s My Spirit is Not Banned (1986), Winnie Mandela’s Part of My Soul Went With Him (1984) and Mamphela Ramphele’s Across Boundaries (1995). These memoirs reveal the ways in which African women’s personal stories shape arguments about their political ideologies and the strategies they employ in navigating both gendered and racial double binds of South African politics during the twentieth century. How do these women’s personal narratives help us to understand the construction of gendered identity under apartheid, the relationship between individual agency and personal memory and the power of collective memory via memoir? Above all, how do these memoirs broaden our understanding of African women’s contributions to Pan-Africanism in Africa?
This paper presents findings from a descriptive, qualitative research study with Black women in Barbados who experienced self-reported postpartum depression and/or the ‘baby blues’. Anchored by Black Feminist Theory and Caribbean Feminist Theory, the paper discusses women’s first-hand experiences of maternal mental health and the formal supports they accessed through the national healthcare system. Women’s informal supportive resources are also outlined which were sometimes accessed in lieu of, or in addition to, these services. Focusing on formal and informal supportive resources enables an analysis of the ways women request, seek out, and at times even reject supportive resources during their maternal depression experiences in Barbados.
The Qur’an as the main Holy book of Islam affirms that men and women are created from one soul, and that they are partners to each other, that males and females have the same religious responsibilities, and that both genders will receive similar treatment on the Day of Judgment. Yet the reality of Muslim societies all across the globe diverges greatly from the ideal and forces women into a type of religious practices and daily living that are extremely patriarchal and oppressive. The main research question is: How can Qur’an hermeneutics and developing a gender sensitive approach to rereading the Qur’an can enhance the current status of Muslim women? With reference to the works of Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas, the aim of this current research is to examine the two approaches to gender re- readings of the Qur’an and to find women’s voice in the interpretative dialogue of Islam’s primary text. It also aims to explore how such voices may unshackle Muslim women from discrimination.
NGOs, but also journalists and scholars often generalize about gender relations in (African) Muslim societies, and their conclusions tend to be normative: either that women there will always be oppressed or they overemphasize changes over the last decades, for example, the emerging (Muslim) women’s movements. Both conclusions are simplistic. Muslim women’s social, political, religious, and economic roles differ, amongst others, according to their age, their educational, ethnic, and family background, not to mention their personal character. Thus, their situation differs significantly from place to place and varies across time. To emphasize the active engagement of Muslim women with others in the Guinean city of Kankan this article draws on Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) definition of human agency as the outcome of an interplay between habit, imagination, and judgment. This analytical lens serves to shed light on particular gender relations and the shifts therein in a given context.
It gives me a great pleasure to be the guest editor of this special issue of Muslim women in Africa and the Diaspora of the prize winner international journal JENdA: The Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, the issue is timely as now more than ever before the world is witnessing an increasing interest in Islam, in general, and in issues related to women in Islam in particular. “Are Muslim women allowed to work?” “Do you go to work on camels?” “Did you meet your husband before marriage?” “How many wives does your husband have?” “Do you wear hijab at home?” These and many other questions are raised in discussions about women in Africa and women in Islam. Definitely, the essays in this collection will not answer all these questions, but they will give the reader some perspective concerning the past, present and future of Muslim women in Africa and in the diaspora.
intersectionality. It aims to unpack the diverse settings of Islam and Islamic culture, circumscribed around issues of the performativity of Islam and identity construction. The key hypothesis maintains that identities are constructed through difference; therefore it highlights African Islam and African Muslims identifications and their inflection by the politics of race and religion. The article interrogates gendered African Muslim subjectivities, and the experience of multiple discourses of exclusion, due to ethnicity, race, identity and religion. Examining a religious category involves sensitivity as well as the politicisation of this identifier, because of its relationship to Islamophobia, exclusion and racial discourses in the Western imaginary. There is need to integrate the political introduction of the framework that deals with the concept of the ‘Other.’ Accordingly, I have argued for a necessary permeability of discipline boundaries that provides points of convergence, thereby broadening possibilities for research analysis and widening the parameters of what we can know, specifically about the marginalized raced and gendered Islam of an African subject.
Zanzibar Island, which comprises of two sister islands – Unguja and Pemba – located in the East African coast, is a dominant Muslim region with over ninety seven percent of its population Muslims. Kizimkazi Mosque, a twelfth century mosque in Unguja South with Kufic inscriptions peculiar in the region, indicates the presence of Muslim communities during that time. The arrival of more Muslim communities from Asia and the eastern African coast took place in the early decades of the nineteenth century when Zanzibar Town became a commercial center in East Africa receiving from and importing merchandises to India, Europe and America. Muslim women were part and parcel of the religious developments on the islands, and they attained Islamic education through Quranic schools and brotherhood movements. From the early 1950s, with the growth of nationalist movements and the emergence of political parties in Zanzibar, women were initiators of political transformation. They adopted various methods, some of which were common to many African countries while others were locally designed by them. This article examines the contributions made by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) women during the nationalist struggles. It trains on their creativeness and use of feminine attires to convey political messages. I argue that, the wearing of the kanga became instrumental in shaping women’s political activism.
