African Women Writing Resistance

African Women Writing Resistance is the first transnational anthology to focus on women’s strategies of resistance to the challenges they face in Africa today.  The anthology brings together personal narratives, testimony, interviews, short stories, poetry, performance scripts, folktales, and lyrics. Thematically organized, it presents women’s writing on such issues as intertribal and interethnic conflicts, the degradation of the environment, polygamy, domestic abuse, the controversial traditional practice of female genital cutting, Sharia law, intergenerational tensions, and emigration and exile.     Contributors include internationally recognized authors and activists such as Wangari Maathai and Nawal El Saadawi, as well as a host of vibrant new voices from all over the African continent and from the African diaspora. Interdisciplinary in scope, this collection provides an excellent introduction to contemporary African women’s literature and highlights social issues that are particular to Africa but are also of worldwide concern.  It is an essential reference for students of African studies, world literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and women’s studies.  A Choice Outstanding Academic Book Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association Best Books for High Schools, Best Books for Special Interests, and Best Books for Professional Use, selected by the American Association of School Libraries

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez is professor of comparative literature and gender studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Pauline Dongala fled Congo-Brazzaville in 2000 and is working on a book about the importance of traditional African healing practices in the contemporary world. Omotayo Jolaosho, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, works on issues of performance, creativity, and community activism in South Africa. Anne Serafin is an independent scholar specializing in African literatures.

Foreword >Preface       
Acknowledgments   
African Women Writing Resistance: An Introduction > Part One. Engaging with Tradition The Day When God Changed His Mind >The Old Woman >Interview with Kaya a Mbaya, a Babongo Woman >Interview with Elisabeth Bouanga > Part Two. Speaking Out: Young Women on Sexuality Woman Weep No More >Letters to My Cousin >Story of Faith >ReMembering Africa >It's Not Rape If . . . >To Be or Not to Be a Lesbian: The Dilemma of Cameroon's Women Soccer Players >My Name Is Kasha >Cosmo Africa and Other Poems > Part Three. Challenging the Institution of Marriage Child >Hailstones on Zamfara >The Good Woman >Ngomwa >They Came in the Morning >The Battle of Words: Oratory as Women's Tool of Resistance to the Challenges of Polygamy in Contemporary Wolof Society > Part Four. Focusing on Survival: Women's Health Issues Tell Me Why: Two Poems >Surviving Me >The Struggle to End the Practice of Female Genital Mutilation >Slow Poison >Just Keep Talking: Two Poems >Tell Me a Lie >Prayers and Meditation Heal Despair > Part Five. Taking a Stand: Women as Activists against War, Environmental Degradation, and Social Conflict "A Poem Written in the Ink of the Blood Shed in Rwanda" and "Poet's Note: On Writing Poetry: Resistance, Transcendence and Survival" >Excerpt from Biography of Ash >Women's Responses to State Violence in the Niger Delta >Excerpt from Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life >Don't Get Mad, Get Elected! A Conversation with Activist Wangari Maathai (Kenya) > Part Six. Writing from a Different Place: Perspectives on Exile and Diaspora Musings of an African Woman: Excerpts from a Memoir in Progress >A Moroccan Woman in the G-local Village: Reflections on Islam, Identity, and Cultural Legacies >Knowing Your Place >Letter to Clara > Part Seven. Standing at the Edge of Time: African Women's Visions of the Past, Present, and Future Roundtable: "We Are Our Grandmothers Dreams": African Women Envision the Future >Liberation > >Contributors