Synopses & Reviews
In The Nation Writ Small, Susan Z. Andrade focuses on the work of Africaandrsquo;s first post-independence generation of novelists, explaining why male writers came to be seen as the voice of Africaandrsquo;s new nation-states, and why African women writersandrsquo; commentary on national politics was overlooked. Since Africaandrsquo;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 Sembandegrave;ne, Mariama Bandacirc;, and Aminata Sow Fall (Senegal); and bildungsromans by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Nuruddin Farah (Somalia), and Assia Djebar (Algeria). Andrade reveals the influence of Africaandrsquo;s early women novelists on later generations of female authors, and she highlights the moment when African women began to write about macropolitics explicitly rather than allegorically.
Review
andldquo;The Nation Writ Small is a brilliant work, feminist and literary scholarship of the highest order. It is a superb reading of the relationship between gender and nationalism in postcolonial African literature and culture, based on Susan Z. Andradeandrsquo;s deep knowledge of African texts and cultural politics.andrdquo;andmdash;Simon Gikandi, Princeton University
Review
andldquo;Susan Z. Andrade brings new levels of nuance and complexity to bear on issues that have preoccupied, if not obsessed, readers of African women writers: Are they feminist? And are they nationalist? Andrade dismantles these questions, studies their component parts, and reassembles them with finesse and insight.andrdquo;andmdash;Christopher L. Miller, author of The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade
Review
andldquo;In her discussion of postindependence fiction (which includes texts published in both English and French), Andrade complicates a dominant story that still widely informs understandings of the development of African fiction.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958andndash;1988, Susan Andrade mounts a strong argument for reading African fiction by women (with honourable mention of male feminist authors) along a matrilineal line A phrase of Christopher Oumaandrsquo;s andndash; andldquo;heirs of a new genealogyandrdquo; (103) andndash; can be taken to sum up this worthwhile collectionandrsquo;s celebration and critical re-evaluation of the Achebean legacy.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[The Nation Writ Small] is clearly argued and theoretically ambitious, aiming to place feminist literature (by male and female authors) within the conversation about nationalist politics that dominated the field in the years immediately following independence.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The debates in which The Nation Writ Small aims to intercede, therefore, are both internal to African literary studies and germane to the ways in which the field represents itself to the outside world. It is here at the difficult intersection of internal debates and external perception that The Nation Writ Small will be of interest to scholars of a variety of literatures of the Global South.andrdquo; - Magalandiacute; Armillas-Tiseyra, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Review
andquot;The Nation Writ Small illustrates the enriched forms of literary scholarship that can emerge when we read simultaneously for form and theme while continuously verifying these analytical objects against the historiography of the respective literary tradition.andquot;
Synopsis
A study of African women’s literature in the context of anti-colonial struggles.
Synopsis
Challenging the notion that Africa s first women novelists were uninterested in postcolonial politics, Susan Z. Andrade shows that in their allegorical fiction, the family stood for the nation.
About the Author
Susan Z. Andrade is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the co-editor of Atlantic Cross-Currents/Transatlantiques (Africa World Press, 2001).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. The Joys of Daughterhood: Achebe, Nwapa, Emecheta 44
2. The Loved and the Left: Sembne, Band#226;, Sow Fall 71
3. Bildung in Formation and Deformation: Dangarembga and Farah 114
4. Bildung at Its Boundaries: Djebar, Two Ways 165
Conclusion 202
Selected Chronology of African Novels 209
Notes 213
References 239
Index 253