The Lock on My Lips: Lock on My Lips, The

Foreword

ix Foreword The fight for women’s rights continues to be a major issue amongst feminist scholars, writers and activists since Mary Wollstonecraft. While it must be admitted that major grounds have been covered over the decades and women are seen more and more to be very efficient partners in development and not just subordinates or people who provide existential whims for men, women in most parts of the world are still yoked to some resistant cultural practices which prevent them from benefiting or exercising their full human rights. Feminism today has developed in a number of ways, representing different political, social, religious, moral, educational and cultural aspirations and the arguments and controversies have equally taken varied dimensions including Marxist, psychoanalytical, Eco critical, postmodernist, and cultural critical perspectives. The different dimensions and controversies of course, indicate the fact that the fight for women’s rights is an important issue affecting humanity and which has become the concern of not just women but equally men. But what seems to create a rift in a compromising stand is perhaps the fact that theoretical considerations and criticism infringe on cultural norms of the different peoples of the world. This is the hallmark of the controversy in feminism when some cultures claim some sort of cognitive and ethical absolutism. In the early reception of feminism in Africa, most African feminist scholars and writers thought that equal rights for men and women meant the implantation of radical western models on African societies and cultures. The result was of course, the gradual visible wreckage of African families as well as African culture and social order. But as time went by, positions began to change and African feminist scholars and critics began to realize the danger of embracing foreign ideologies without checks and balances. Today, African feminism seeks to institute the rights of women without necessarily dismantling the cultural framework of which the woman is an important stakeholder. Rather, the problem today is to eradicate x fossilized cultural practices which hinder women from effectively performing their roles. This is the position which Perpetua Nkamanyang Lola takes in her very scintillating play, The Lock on My Lips. In writing the play she refuses to take extremist positions which are the flaw of most feminist writers. Rather, she seeks to reconcile conflicting ideas and opinions between husband and wife, tradition and modernity, men’s rights and women’s rights, darkness and light, among others, masterminded by her main character, a powerful model of a woman, who shows immutable respect for her husband and the culture of the people but who is also intransigent in the fight for her rights through the power of humility and polite yet subtle rationalization. The serious didactic value of the play cannot be overemphasized. It is a play in which conflicting opinions and ideas are put on the table and debated upon; an important contribution to the age-long controversy, an insurmountable crusade for women’s rights, and a good instrument for raising awareness about the right modes of living with one another. Professor John Nkemngong Nkengasong Writer and Critic ...