English, Department of
First Advisor
Matt Cohen
Second Advisor
Ng’ang’a Wahu-Mũchiri
Third Advisor
Chigozie Obioma
Date of this Version
5-4-2023
Abstract
It is thought that African literature tends to be dominated by the masculine-oriented politics that also characterizes African public political life. In some cases, this is true, but there is a feminist movement in Africa, and many African women writers are using global feminist principles and global anti-colonial principles to write a different kind of literature. As a consequence, recent novels such as Yvonne Vera’s Nehanda (1993), set in Zimbabwe, and Petina Gappah’s Out of Darkness, Shining Light (2019), revise past, often male, African writers’ approaches to depicting the genders, even as they also criticize, implicitly or explicitly, still-widespread colonialist stereotypes of African women. This thesis will analyze first Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958), and the 1959 play The Lion and The Jewel by Wole Soyinka for their representation of African gender politics under the stress of colonialism. It will then argue that Vera and Gappah represent a new approach to depicting women characters in relation to colonization and agency.
Advisor: Matt Cohen
Comments
A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts, Major: English, Under the Supervision of Professor Matt Cohen. Lincoln, Nebraska: May 2023
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