Body, Sexuality, and Gender: Versions and Subversions in African Literatures 1

by Flora Veit-Wild (Editor)

Literary representations of the body from Africa as well as narrative strategies of writing the body have only recently begun to receive wider critical attention. The reflections on body, sexuality, and gender in African literary texts brought together in this volume do not consider these three terms as separate entities but instead as closely related to each other, each term questioning the bodies and sexualities that are transgressing concepts of gender, gender that is probing body and sexuality. With regard to Africa, the three concepts form a particularly contested space, because body and sexuality are not only subjected to power relations in terms of gender, but also in terms of race, ethnicity, and the legacy of colonialism. While the sections “Gifted Bodies” and “Queered Bodies” show new developments in viewing body and sexuality as creative powers, the sections “Tainted Bodies” and “Violated Bodies” comprise essays that investigate the exposure of the body to physical aggression and other traumatic experiences. Some of the authors treated in detail Ama Ata Aidoo, Mariama Bâ, Calixthe Beyala, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bessie Head, Sheila Kohler, Flora Nwapa, Promise Okekwe, Yvonne Vera; André Brink, J.M. Coetzee, K. Sello Duiker, Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dambudzo Marechera, Arthur Nortje, Ben Okri, Shamim Sarif, and Williams Sassine. CONTRIBUTORS Akachi Adimora--Ezeigbo
Susan Arndt
Unoma N. Azuah
Elleke Boehmer
Monica Bungaro
Lucy Valerie Graham
Jessica Hemmings
Sigrid G. Köhler
Martina Kopf
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi
Marion Pape
Robert Muponde
Sarah Nuttall
Drew Shaw
Alioune Sow
Cheryl Stobie
Alexie Tcheuyap

293 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2005