Celebrating Female Sexuality in Baingana’s ‘Tropical Fish’ and Adichie’s Americanah
Japheth Peter Muindu,
Erick Kipkoech Mutai
Issue:
Volume 4, Issue 4, July 2016
Pages:
44-48
Received:
16 May 2016
Accepted:
31 May 2016
Published:
18 June 2016
Abstract: Simone de Beauvoir’s prediction that the destruction of patriarchy will be realized when women dismantle their patriarchal objectification calls for a rethinking and a reconstruction in culture and feminist discourses of the female body which patriarchy packages as the woman’s curse. This paper is an insurrectionary critique of Baingana’s ‘Tropical Fish’ and Adichie’s Americanah using the concept of the perverse dynamic advanced by Jonathan Dollimore, which is suffused with feminist ethos, to indict gender dichotomies and the limitations of patriarchal structures. The conflating of the politics of sexuality, dissidence and liberation has been overlooked by critics. I posit that sexual dissidence, which is conventionally an aberration, emerges in the texts as emancipating and as a strategy employed by female characters to subvert patriarchy.
Abstract: Simone de Beauvoir’s prediction that the destruction of patriarchy will be realized when women dismantle their patriarchal objectification calls for a rethinking and a reconstruction in culture and feminist discourses of the female body which patriarchy packages as the woman’s curse. This paper is an insurrectionary critique of Baingana’s ‘Tropical...
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Cyprian Ekwensi as a National, Urban or Pan-African Writer
Issue:
Volume 4, Issue 4, July 2016
Pages:
55-60
Received:
30 April 2016
Accepted:
25 June 2016
Published:
15 July 2016
Abstract: Cyprian Ekwensi is, by any standard a major figure in African literature of the mid-twentieth Century. From its birth to date, Nigerian literature witnessed a tremendous growth and development with the early publications of the literary works of Chinua Achebe and those of Wole Soyinka respectively. However, despite the publication of about eight major novels by Cyprian Ekwensi, some literary critics still refuse to acknowledge the contribution and the importance of this popular Nigerian author. This paper attempts therefore to shed more light on the literary career of the author, his literary ideology as well as why some critics tag him to be a National, Urban or Pan-African Writer.
Abstract: Cyprian Ekwensi is, by any standard a major figure in African literature of the mid-twentieth Century. From its birth to date, Nigerian literature witnessed a tremendous growth and development with the early publications of the literary works of Chinua Achebe and those of Wole Soyinka respectively. However, despite the publication of about eight ma...
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