Women Writers in Francophone Africa [Hardcover]

In the rapidly growing field of African literature in French, writing by women has largely been ignored. This book, the first comprehensive study of women's writing in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, redressess the critical imbalance and celebrates the originality of this fascinating new literature.Considering questions of genre and ideology, the author highlights the tension between the individualistic act of writing and the collective tradition of African society - a tension which emerges as the key to each of the texts discussed. Focusing on four major authors - Mariama B?, Aminata Sow Fall, Werewere Liking and Calixthe Beyala, each with an international reputation - the book uses a feminist approach to consider the duality of the African woman, who is often torn between modernity and tradition. This duality, the author suggests, is reconfigured through fictional writings which provide a space for alternative female subjectivities to emerge.Nicki Hitchcott Lecturer in French,University of Nottingham

Nicki Hitchcott's work has the merit of a remarkable intellectual honesty. Critical presuppositions may not be shared, but they are clearly signed and justified in a lucid fashion in the course of the study. Etudes Litteraires Africaines

[The book] forces its readers to reassess any preconceptions they may have about women's writing and the place of women's writing in the canon. At the same time, it examines our attitudes towards Africa and African writing, making this a thought provoking and challenging work. Francophonie

Hitchcott's work includes an excellent bibliograhpy. Choice

Women Writers in Francophone Africaopens up to the English-speaking African, letting him/her get a peak into what his/her French-speaking women writers have been doing all along. Expo Times

By asking that her study be read as a dialogue between a Western feminist reader and the francophone voices of African femininitylÃK