Download or read book Efuru written by Flora Nwapa and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appearing in 1966, Efuru was the first internationally published book, in English, by a Nigerian woman. Flora Nwapa (1931–1993) sets her story in a small village in colonial West Africa as she describes the youth, marriage, motherhood, and eventual personal epiphany of a young woman in rural Nigeria. The respected and beautiful protagonist, an independent-minded Ibo woman named Efuru, wishes to be a mother. Her eventual tragedy is that she is not able to marry or raise children successfully. Alone and childless, Efuru realizes she surely must have a higher calling and goes to the lake goddess of her tribe, Uhamiri, to discover the path she must follow. The work, a rich exploration of Nigerian village life and values, offers a realistic picture of gender issues in a patriarchal society as well as the struggles of a nation exploited by colonialism.
Download or read book Notes on Flora Nwapa s Efuru written by Anna Githaiga and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 1979 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Idu written by Flora Nwapa and published by . This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'What we are all praying for is children. What else do we want if we have children?' These two sentences from Idu contain the basic theme of this novel set in a rural Nigerian community where the life of the individual is woven into that of the community as a whole. Idu, the protagonist, faces the challenge of infertility, leading her husband Adiewere to take a second wife. Eventually, Idu gives birth to a son named Ijoma, but it takes four years before she becomes pregnant again. However, tragedy strikes as Adiewere mysteriously dies before the arrival of their second child. Defying societal norms, Idu rejects the idea of marrying her husband's brother and instead chooses to join her husband in the afterlife, showcasing that children alone do not define her ultimate desires in life. Idu stands as a testament to Nwapa's commitment to portraying the lives and struggles of African women in the face of societal pressures.
Download or read book Women are Different written by Flora Nwapa and published by . This book was released on 1992-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The moving story of a group of Nigerian women which follows their lives from their schooldays together through the trials and tribulations of their adult lives. Through their stories we see some of the universal problems faced by women everywhere: the struggle for financial independence and a rewarding career, the difficulties of relationships, and the dilemmas of bringing up a family, often without a partner. Set against the background of a developing Nigeria, this novel shows Nwapa at her finest.
Download or read book Discussion about Efuru by Flora Nwapa written by Mumtaz Mazumdar and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Literature - Africa, Assam University, course: MA, language: English, abstract: The novel Efuru is written by Flora Nwapa. Nwapa is the first Nigerian and Igbo woman who to write a novel upon the Igbo female. The Igbos are one of the three major tribes of Nigeria, inhabiting Anambra, Imo and Edo states. There have been prominent male novelists who were Igbos and wrote in English. But, the male writers rarely included the females. Nwapa, atlast breaks the silence. She arose in response to consolidation of male authorship. She adds to the beginning of the new knowledge upon Igbo women with Efuru. Key words: Efuru, Igbo, female,
Download or read book Africa Wo Man Palava written by Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-04-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ogunyemi uses the novels to trace a Nigerian women's literary tradition that reflects an ideology centered on children and community. Of prime importance is the paradoxical Mammywata figure, the independent, childless mother, who serves as a basis for the postcolonial woman in the novels and in society at large. Ogunyemi tracks this figure through many permutations, from matriarch to writer, her multiple personalities reflecting competing loyalties. This sustained critical study counters prevailing "masculinist" theories of black literature in a powerful narrative of the Nigerian world.
Download or read book Binding Cultures written by Gay Wilentz and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1992-05-22 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wilentz . . . makes convincing arguments for the connections between African and Afro-American women's culture." —Nellie McKay "Wilentz's jargon-free, intelligent discussion . . . will appeal to students in African, African American, and women's literature courses, as well as general readers interested in the emerging field." —Choice "Through these works, Wilentz demonstrates the powerful transformation possible through understanding—and embracing—the past, even if that past includes oppression and brutalization." —Belles Lettres Binding Cultures investigates the cultural bonds between African and African-American women writers such as Nigerian Flora Nwapa and Ghanaians Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, writers who focus on the role of women in passing on cultural values to future generations, and African-American writers Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Paule Marshall, who self-consciously evoke African culture to help create a more integrated African-American community.
Download or read book Doomi Golo The Hidden Notebooks written by Boubacar Boris Diop and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel to be translated from Wolof to English, Doomi Golo—The Hidden Notebooks is a masterful work that conveys the story of Nguirane Faye and his attempts to communicate with his grandson before he dies. With a narrative structure that beautifully imitates the movements of a musical piece, Diop relates Faye’s trauma of losing his only son, Assane Tall, which is compounded by his grandson Badou’s migration to an unknown destination. While Faye feels certain that his grandson will return one day, he also is convinced that he will no longer be alive by then. Faye spends his days sitting under a mango tree in the courtyard of his home, reminiscing and observing his surroundings. He speaks to Badou through his seven notebooks, six of which are revealed to the reader, while the seventh, the “Book of Secrets,” is highly confidential and reserved for Badou’s eyes only. In the absence of letters from Badou, the notebooks form the only possible means of communication between the two, carrying within them tunes and repetitions that give this novel its unusual shape: loose and meandering on the one hand, coherent and tightly interwoven on the other. Translated by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop.
Download or read book The Promised Land written by Grace Ogot and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 1991-06-15 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young farmer and his wife who have migrated to Tanzania from Kenya become embroiled in issues of personal jealousy and materialism, and a melodramatic tale of tribal hatreds ensues. The novel explores Ogot's concept of the ideal African wife: obedient and submissive to her husband; family and community orientated; and committed to non-materialist goals. The style is distinctively ironic giving the story power and relevance. Grace Ogot has been employed in diverse occupations as a novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter, politician, and representative to the UN. Some of her other works include The Island of Tears (1980), the short story collection Land Without Thunder (1988), The Strange Bride (1989) and The Other Woman (1992). The Promised Land was originally published in 1966, and has since been reprinted five times.
Download or read book The Concubine written by Elechi Amadi and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1966 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a remote village in Eastern Nigeria, an area yet to be affected by European values and where society is orderly and predictable, the story concerns a woman "of great beauty and dignity" who inadvertently brings suffering and death to all her lovers. The novel portrays a society still ruled by traditional gods, offering a glimpse into the human relationships that such a society creates.
Download or read book The Lake Goddess written by Flora Nwapa and published by . This book was released on 2023-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lake Goddess came to be Flora Nwapa's last novel, yet possibly her most important one, as it restores African culture and spirituality. "Nwapa's message is clear: she-Ona/Ogbuide/woman-may have many children, but she also independently succeeds in her own life, and she is a source of healing and inspiration to all human beings suffering from the ills and madness of modern society worldwide. The goddess whom Nwapa invoked finally reemerges in her original glory in The Lake Goddess to brighten women's path. Her powers and mysteries shine, once again, despite the onslaught of foreign powers and their religions, when Nwapa accounts for the destructive forces of globalization and for attempts to push Uhammiri's children into the abyss of derangement, to rob the deity of her benevolence, and to deny her people both children and wealth. Yet, when the lake goddess finally appears with her image fully restored in Nwapa's last novel, the messenger, who invoked her, has left the land, crossed the river, and joined her ancestors to live on.
Download or read book Post Colonial and African American Women s Writing written by Gina Wisker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible and unusually wide-ranging book is essential reading for anyone interested in postcolonial and African American women's writing. It provides a valuable gender and culture inflected critical introduction to well established women writers: Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Suniti Namjoshi, Bessie Head, and others from the U.S.A., India, Africa, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and introduces emergent writers from South East Asia, Cyprus and Oceania. Engaging with and clarifying contested critical areas of feminism and the postcolonial; exploring historical background and cultural context, economic, political, and psychoanalytic influences on gendered experience, it provides a cohesive discussion of key issues such as cultural and gendered identity, motherhood, mothertongue, language, relationships, women's economic constraints and sexual politics.
Download or read book Juletane written by Myriam Warner-Vieyra and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful and moving novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra sensitively portrays the complexities of cross-cultural relationships and, in particular, the female predicament. When Helene, a self-reliant career woman, is packing her belongings for a move and imminent marriage for which she is reluctant, she unearths a faded old book. It is the diary of young Juletane, a confused, sheltered West Indian woman struggling to find herself. Written over three weeks, it records her short life: childhood in France, marriage to an African student, and an eager return with him to Africa, the land of her ancestors. It is Juletane’s diary that brings her and Helene together. Juletane does not fit into her husband’s traditional African family, especially the Muslim cultural demands of polygamy. Full of gentle ironies, Juletane is a story about alienation, madness, shattered dreams: the disillusioned West Indian outsider’s disenchantment with Africa. Myriam Warner-Vieyra looks at women’s lives, at the paths they have taken, at the possibilities open to women in the Caribbean, in Africa, in life. She forces readers, through the double narrative of Juletane and Helene, to reexamine easy assumptions, to look again at safe generalizations. Includes valuable Introduction 2014 by the translator.
Download or read book Issues in African Literature written by Charles E. Nnolim and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multitudinous nature of African literature has always been an issue but really not a problem, although its oral base has been used by expatriate critics to accuse African literature of thin plots, superficial characterisation, and narrative structures. African literature also, it is observed, is a mixed grill: it is oral; it is written in vernacular or tribal tongues; written in foreign tongues English, French, Portuguese and within the foreign language in which it is written, pidgin and creole further bend the already bent language giving African literature a further taint of linguistic impurity. African literature further suffers from the nature of its "newness" and this created problems for the critic. Because it is new, and because its critics are in simultaneous existence with its writers, we confront the problem of "instant analysis". Issues in African Literature continues the debate and tries to clarify contemporary burning issues in African literature, by focussing on particular areas where the debate has been most concerned or around which it has hovered and been persistent.
Download or read book Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories written by Alifa Rifaat and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam.
Download or read book When Rain Clouds Gather written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head (1937–1986). Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head’s tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionize the villagers’ traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, opposition from the local chief, and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community. Head’s layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as social and political change, conflict between science and traditional ways, tribalism, the role of traditional African chiefs, religion, race relations, and male–female relations.
Download or read book The Bride Price written by Buchi Emecheta and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young Ibo girl named Aku-nna flees an unwanted marriage to be with her true love, Chike, the son of a prosperous former slave. However, Aku-nna's uncle refuses the bride price from Chike's family, an action that frightens Aku-nna for it foreshadows her own death in childbirth.
