Towards a New Feminist Practice in Africa: ‘The Women Writing Africa Project'
Pamela Ryan
Abstract
This
article looks at the Women Writing Africa project as both a response to
prevailing assumptions about the African woman as abject and helpless,
and as a positive reinforcement of women's agency in an African
context. I read the two texts that represent the project thus far (Women Writing Africa: the Southern Region and Women Writing Africa West Africa and the Sahel)
as indicative of a new African feminism, one that foregrounds women's
writing, in all its forms, as a means whereby to re-envision African
women, to invoke women's writing as evidence of women's strength and
diversity, and to re-imagine the African continent as a place in which
women have been active participants in its history and culture.
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