The Nation Writ Small

by Andrade, Susan Z.

• ISBN13: 9780822349211
• ISBN10: 0822349213
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-11-02
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

In The Nation Writ Small, Susan Z. Andrade focuses on the work of Africa#x19;s first post-independence generation of novelists, explaining why male writers came to be seen as the voice of Africa#x19;s new nation-states, and why African women writers#x19; commentary on national politics was overlooked. Since Africa#x19;s early female novelists tended to write about the family, while male authors often explicitly addressed national politics, it was assumed that the women writers were uninterested in the nation and the public sphere. Challenging that notion, Andrade argues that the female authors engaged national politics through allegory. In their work, the family stands for the nation; it is the nation writ small. Interpreting fiction by women, as well as several feminist male authors, she analyzes novels by Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria); novellas by Ousmane Sembene, Mariama B#xE2;, and Aminata Sow Fall (Senegal); and Bildungsromans by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Nuruddin Farah (Somalia), and Assia Djebar (Algeria). Andrade reveals Africa#x19;s early women novelists' influence on later generations of female authors, and she highlights the moment when African women began to write about macropolitics explicitly rather than allegorically.

Author Biography

Susan Z. Andrade is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-editor of Atlantic Cross-Currents/Transatlantiques. She was guest editor of "The Form of Postcolonial African Fiction,"

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Joys of Daughterhood: Achebe, Nwapa, Emecheta	p. 44
The Loved and the Left: Sembène, Bâ, Sow Fall	p. 71
Bildung in Formation and Deformation: Dangarembga and Farah	p. 114
Bildung at Its Boundaries: Djebar, Two Ways	p. 165
Conclusion	p. 202
Selected Chronology of African Novels	p. 209
Notes	p. 213
References	p. 239
Index	p. 253
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