Feministic Issues In Ama Ata Aidoo’S Changes And Sefi Atta’S Everything Good Will Come
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Feministic Issues In Ama Ata Aidoo’S Changes And Sefi Atta’S Everything Good Will Come
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study.
Feminism emerged as a result of women’s awareness of their social condition and the repressive acts perpetrated against them.
In traditional Africa, women are constantly scorned, degraded, and physically tortured. Historically, women did not exist as individuals with personalities to protect.
They existed primarily as docile and exotic companions to the males. Throughout that time, women lacked the ability to explain their difficulty and point of view. As a result, they willingly accepted their fate.
In those days, these women faced the same oppressive social conditions as their male counterparts in a developing society, but they were also subjected to additional repressive loads resulting from patriarchal and gender hierarchical socio-cultural institutions. These years of subjection, however, have resulted in today’s women’s constant questioning of the status quo.
They speak out against dehumanisation, political captivity, and social tyranny. They argue that controlling the African continent is not solely the responsibility of men, and that both sexes should be treated equally in all aspects of life. Such a reaction is labelled feminism, which is an ideology that demands, in basic language, recognition of the claims of women for equal rights with men.
The term “feminism” typically refers to historically recent European and American social movements created to fight for female equality. Feminism, as defined above, has evolved into a global political project.
African female writers have come a long way since the 1960s, when there were only a few women who published fiction and were hardly acknowledged by reviewers, if at all. At the end of the twentieth century, it was no longer unusual to discuss generations of female African writers or classify female authors as ‘established’ or ’emerging’.
In 1991, Nadine Gordimer, a female South African writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two years later, the African continent lost a prominent female writer, Flora Nwapa of Nigeria.
Flora Nwapa, a novelist, short story writer, and poet, held the first printed copies of her three new plays, Sycophants (SIC), on her deathbed on October 17, 1993. She was a pioneering African female novelist who had previously produced poems and short tales before exposing her talents as a playwright, among others.
The phenomenon of female transformation did not just affect creative artists. African women scholars, too, were fed up with having someone else define the aesthetics of female writing for them or patronisingly characterise the dynamic and essential reality of being a woman in Africa’s socio-cultural and political environments.
This issue of African literature today is fully dedicated to African writers and the representation of women in African literature. This acknowledges two important facts: first, that African women writers, as a number of articles in the collection point out, have been neglected in largely male-authored journals, critical studies, and critical anthologies; and second
that the last ten years or so have seen a tremendous blossoming of highly accomplished work by African women writers, and it would have been excusable to continue to ignore them.
The second truth helps to explain the first, but not totally. If critical attention has been sparse, this is due in part to the fact that African women’s literary production was equally sparse until the late 1960s. This is most likely due to a combination of well-known historical and sociological causes.
Writing and education go hand in hand, and for many sociological and other reasons, women’s education in Africa has trailed much behind that of men. Adetokunbo Pearce’s article on Efua Suther Land’s plays demonstrates how public the function of the dramatist could and generally is, but African societies have been sluggish to recognise women’s’senior’ status and public exposure.
In this regard, it may appear surprising that African women have been featured last in poetry, the most intimate of the genres. The fact is that, in Africa, the poet’s job has always been public. The demise of African women writers until recently is most likely due to traditional African attitudes towards women.
Feminism is the conviction, mostly originating in the West, in the social, economic, and political equality of sexes, which is represented around the world by numerous institutions dedicated to advancing women’s rights.
A feminist is someone who believes that women should have equal rights and opportunities as men. The term feminism is commonly associated with the women’s rights movement, which originated in the late 18th century and continues to advocate for political, social, and economic equality between men and women.
According to Hook’s (1984) statement in Akorede (1996; 50), feminism is a movement concerned with positively promoting the image of women and the development of female consciousness and awareness.
According to Nnolim (1994:248), feminism is a movement and ideology that advocates, in simple terms, the acceptance of women’s claims to equal rights with men in legal, political, economic, social, and marital situations.
According to Helen Chukwuma (1994: IX): Feminism in African Literature, it is a rejection of inferiority and a yearning for recognition; it attempts to provide a woman a sense of self as a worthwhile, effectual, and contributing human being.
It is a reaction to the preconceptions that deny women a positive identity. It aimed to improve women’s status in a society dominated by men. According to Chukwuma (1994: IX), feminist writers highlight African women’s acute need for recognition and partnership.
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