Research Catalog

Title

Rising anthills : African and African American writing on female genital excision, 1960-2000 / Elisabeth Bekers.

Author

Bekers, Elisabeth, 1971-

Publication

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 262 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

From the Publisher: Female genital excision, or the ritual of cutting the external genitals of girls and women, is undoubtedly one of the most heavily and widely debated cultural traditions of our time. By looking at how writers of African descent have presented the practice in their literary work, Elisabeth Bekers shows how the debate on female genital excision evolved over the last four decades of the twentieth century, in response to changing attitudes about ethnicity, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, and human rights. Rising Anthills (the title refers to a Dogon myth) analyzes works in English, French, and Arabic by African and African American writers, both women and men, from different parts of the African continent and the Diaspora. Attending closely to the nuances of language and the complexities of the issue, Bekers explores lesser-known writers side by side with such recognizable names as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Flora Nwapa, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahmadou Kourouma, Calixthe Beyala, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor. Following their literary discussions of female genital excision, she discerns a gradual evolution-from the 1960s, when writers mindful of its communal significance carefully "wrote around" the physical operation, through the 1970s and 1980s, when they began to speak out against the practice and their societies' gender politics, to the late 1990s, when they situated their denunciations of female genital excision in a much broader, international context of women's oppression and the struggle for women's rights.

Series Statement

Women in Africa and the diaspora

Uniform Title

• Project Muse UPCC books.
• Women in Africa and the diaspora

Subject

• Female genital mutilation in literature
• Circumcision, Female

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-248) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Introduction: Writing women's rites and rights. Dissecting anthills of insurrection ; Traditional discourses of female genital excision ; Colonial and anticolonial discourses of female genital excision ; Feminist and human rights discourses of female genital excision ; Postcolonial discourses of female genital excision ; Three literary "Generations" writing on female genital excision -- Denunciations of colonization and hesitant feminist criticism in early literary "Circumscriptions" of female genital excision (1963-1974). Excised women's bodies as pamphlets of ethnicity in the Kenyan struggle for independence (Ngugi, Waciuma, and Likimani) ; Two exceptional women's alternative gender scripts (Nwapa and Njau) ; First generation: cultural ambassadors, cautious critics -- Growing feminist disenchantment in literary explorations of female genital excision around the UN decade for women (1968-1988). Immobile women's moving narratives of (Kourouma, Farah, El Saadawi, and Maiga Ka) ; Captive/ating women warriors (Farah, El Saadawi, Beyala, and Rifaat) ; Second generation: resistance against national and gender oppression -- Globalization of the literary debate on female genital excision at the close of the twentieth century (1982-1998). African American fictionalizations of a "culturally challenging" practice (Walker, Naylor, and Clarke and Dickerson) ; Cultural complications in fiction by other women of African descent (Accad, Herzi, and Keita) ; Third generation: affinities across the Diaspora-and through time.
• Introduction: writing women's rites and rights -- Denunciations of colonization and hesitant feminist criticism in early literary "circumscriptions" of female genital excision (1963-1974) -- Growing feminist disenchantment in literary explorations of female genital excision around the UN decade for women (1968-1988) -- The globalization of the literary debate on female genital excision at the close of the twentieth century (1982-1998).

ISBN

• 9780299234942 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0299234940 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9780299234935 (e-book)
• 0299234932 (e-book)

LCCN

^^2009041892

OCLC

• 458737638
• SCSB-11667158

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library