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Sampling the voices of Africa’s literary matriachs
What you need to know:
- Most books by female writers in the continent analyse their daily struggles to find their rightful places in the society
“Dear Aisatou, … This time I shall speak out. My voice has known thirty years of silence, thirty years of harassment. It burst out, violent, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes contemptuous.…”
This was Ramatoulaye, the woman in Mariama Ba’s seminal novel, So Long a Letter. She was telling her sister how she rebuffed her brother-in-law’s advances to inherit her after the death of her husband, Modou.
Tasmir had gone to his sister-in-law Ramatoulaye’s house as custom required that when a man dies, his brother inherits the wife. But she would have none of it and exploded with fury.
As we marked the International Women’s Day early this month, one is wont to reflect on the social, cultural and economic burdens that women in Africa have borne on their bent, beaten backs.
Their suffering and misery under patriarchal tyranny throughout the ages have been captured in various forms of literature.
Voices of discontent
Some of those voices are scathing and viciously anti-men like that of Neshani Andreas of Namibia, while others are sarcastic, humourous yet incisive like those of Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta and Bessie Head.
In her debut novel, The Purple Violets of Ushantu published in 2001, Andreas highlights the physical violence that women bear from their husbands and other mistreatment from in-laws.
She describes men who beat their wives as cowards who can’t stand up to other men in the village.
It has often been stated that no-one knows the pain of discrimination at its vilest more intimately than black people and women.
As blacks are the objects of racial discrimination in the world and oppressive governments systems in their home countries, women experience various forms of discrimination at all stages of their lives right from the home.
As babies, they encounter a lacklustre reception into the world by parents who feel they should have been born male. In childhood and teenage, they have to contend with cultural prejudices from boys and society who remind them that they are lesser beings.
Their fathers, and submissive mothers, deny them education and marry them off as soon as they attain puberty for bride price. Come adulthood and the women have to submit to their husbands and other male folk.
Ba observes that women have almost the same fate, which religious or unjust legislation (state) have sealed. The struggle for women’s emancipation and gender equity in Africa predates the struggle for independence from colonial governments.
Women were colonised long before colonisation by a dominant male superiority syndrome perpetuated by suppressive customs.
Even after independence from colonialists, it was Not Yet Uhuru for the African woman as most African governments relapsed to their male chauvinistic traits under their “(un)just governments of men.”
This has set the women – regardless of the social and economic status – on a fighting mode through literature and other avenues of advocacy.
Central theme
Some of Africa’s women writers who have made the plight of their womenfolk central themes of their works rose to become ministers and assistant ministers in their governments.
These include Mariama Ba (Senegal), Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria) and Grace Ogot (Kenya). They used their literary prowess and political power (though limited) to champion the cause of their gender.
Writing from their experiences, it is clear that some women writers have suffered double discrimination of race and culture. These include South African-born Bessie Head, and renowned African-American author Maya Angelou.
Of these, perhaps it was Bessie Head who had the most traumatising experience. First she was the illegitimate child of an illegal union between a white woman and a black servant born at the height of the harsh apartheid regime.
In the introduction of her book, The Cardinals, it is clear that she dreaded writing in South Africa because “so much that was ugly and destructive in the world around her demanded to be recorded”.
Yet she braced herself and continued writing. Among her books is A Question of Power which captures “the misery and the unnamable terrors of being a rejected child of unknown parents”.
She was later to seek asylum and citizenship in Botswana where she lived as a teacher until her death in 1987.
James Carey comments in Africa Writes Back that women told Bessie Head their stories with Chauceran vividness. Even as she wrote about women suffering in Botswana, she used a unique structure that people anywhere in Africa could compare.
In The Girl Who Can, Aidoo presents stories which illustrate the girl-child’s triumph in male dominated sectors ranging from sports and politics to the military.
In one of the stories, She Who Would be King, Aidoo predicts the formation of a Confederation of African States for which a 36-year-old daughter of a university professor is elected first president.
Well, it is not yet 2026, the predicted date of the event, but if Lupita Nyong’o’s success is anything to go by, them Aidoo’s idea is not that far-fetched after all.
Mr Kibet is an editor at Jomo Kenyatta Foundation