Awakening African Women

By Ginette Curry

Subjects: Social conditions, Women in literature, Women in motion pictures, Women and literature, Motion pictures and women, Women

Description: The book is a comparative analysis of recent films by African male and female filmmakers and literary works by female African authors from Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Togo and Burkina Faso. The films are Finzan (Cheikh Oumar Sissoko, 1990), Women with Open Eyes (Anne-Laure Folly, 1994), and Faces of Women (Desire Ecare, 1985). In addition, the manuscript includes the study of Women are Different (Flora Nwapa, 1986), Double Yoke (Buchi Emecheta, 1983) and So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba, 1980). Curry analyzes the homogeneous themes such as oppression, sabotage, cultural alienation, exploitation, sexual bargaining and the changing dynamics of sexual relationships that appear through these productions. She concludes that African women continue to undergo a metamorphosis. This transformation is the result of a blend of traditionally African and European influences.Modernist terms such as “feminism” and “womanism” intended to capture the emerging African women as subjects and not objects of study, are avoided. In so doing, a theoretical approach is used, based on the author’s own experiences in West Africa. Then, building from that premise, Curry analyzes the novels and films within this context to either prove or disprove her theories. Enthusiasts without past experiences in the area of African literature and African films, and also students and scholars in African studies, specifically in comparative literature, anthropology, women’s studies, sociology, African history, film studies and social studies, will all find this book of great interest. BOOK REVIEW (African Research and Documentation No. 102, 2007): " The strength of Ginette Curry's book lies in her attempt to frontline African women's agency. She notes how the films she selected attempt to break, what she terms, the "western stereotypes" that depict African women as sexual objects. Most notably, she reveals how in these films and novels all women have choices: including oppressed women, socially alienated women, and the women who conduct witchcraft against other women. A key aim of this book is to show how West African women contribute to other women's oppression through perpetuating constraining cultural values, often reproduced orally through proverbs, songs and stories. Curry is right to emphasize how the African women who operate within the patriarchal system may view as a threat other women fighting for change or sexual/economic independence, exposing the actions these women may take to hinder other women's progress. In raising the issues that West African women face, this book, as the title suggests, aims to awake other African women and indeed a 'western' readership to the fast changing lives of women in Africa." -- AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY: Ginette Curry holds a Ph.D. in African American/Post-Colonial Literatures, a B.A. in Italian and a M.A in International Relations from the Sorbonne University, Paris III. She has been teaching in the English Department at Florida International University and is an Affiliate Faculty of FIU African and African Diaspora Studies Program and the FIU Women Studies Program. She is also an Affiliate faculty of the Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization (IRGG) at Yale University. Ginette Curry is the author of "Awakening African Women: The Dynamics of Change" published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2004. Her second book entitled “Toubab La!” Literary Representations of Mixed-Race Characters in the African Diaspora was published in 2007 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Dr. Curry also wrote recent book reviews in African Studies Review (ASR), JENDA (A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies), Affilia (A Journal of Women and Social Work) and West Africa Review (WAR). In the past years and in the FIU African and African Diaspora Program, she has designed and taught several literature courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. In 2007, her book chapter entitled “African Literature” was published in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Cultures: Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, in July 2008, Dr. Curry’s article “African Women, Tradition and Change in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1962) and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter (1982)” appeared in The Journal of Pan African Studies, a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal. Finally, Dr. Curry is in the process of finalizing two upcoming book publications on pre-colonial Africa and multiracial themes in African-European literature.