1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910452886303321

Autore

Oldfield Elizabeth F

Titolo

Transgressing boundaries : gender, identity, culture, and the 'other' in postcolonial women's narratives in East Africa / / Elizabeth F. Oldfield

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Amsterdam : , : Rodopi, , 2013

ISBN

94-012-0955-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (278 p.)

Collana

Cross/cultures : readings in post/colonial literatures and cultures in English ; ; 164

Disciplina

809.9353

Soggetti

Postcolonialism in literature

Women authors, African

African fiction - Women authors - History and criticism

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Derby.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preliminary Material -- Agency, Voice, and Sense of Self: Re-Writing ‘African’ Women’s Identity -- Space and ‘African’ Women Writers -- Woman, the Visitor: Re-Presenting the Female Authorial Voice -- Delineating the Position of African Women -- Creative Dialogue, Signification, Gender, and Space: Talking through Contemporary Children’s Stories -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Fictions written between 1939 and 2005 by indigenous and white (post)colonial women writers emerging from an African–European cultural experience form the focus of this study. Their voyages into the European diasporic space in Africa are important for conveying how African women’s literature is situated in relation to colonialism. Notwithstanding the centrality of African literature in the new postcolonial literatures in English, the accomplishments of the indigenous writer Grace Ogot have been eclipsed by the critical attention given to her male counterparts, while Elspeth Huxley, Barbara Kimenye, and Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, who are of Western cultural provenance but adopt an African perspective, are not accommodated by the genre of ‘expatriate literature’. The present study of both indigenous and white (post)colonial women’s narratives that are common to both categories fills this gap. Focused on the



representation of gender, identity, culture, and the ‘Other’, the texts selected are set in Kenya and Uganda, and a main concern is with the extent to which they are influenced by setting and intercultural influences. The ‘African’ woman’s creation of textuality is at once the expression of female individualities and a transgression of boundaries. The particular category of fiction for children as written by Kimenye and Macgoye reveals the configuration of a voice and identity for the female ‘Other’ and writer which enables a subversive renegotiation of identity in the face of patriarchal traditions.