Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature: 'On est ensemble' (review)

Contemporary Matriarchies considers the work of five female Cameroonian authors, ranging from the lesser-known autobiography of Marie-Claire Matip (the first female writer to have been published in Cameroon) to the award-winning novels of Calixthe Beyala. Rather than reading these texts through Western-centric models of feminism, which risks producing limited and erroneous interpretations, Toman draws on the work of Afrocentric feminists and anthropologists to reposition these narratives within the heterogeneous history of Cameroon's matriarchal societies. Moving chronologically through a forty-year period — from pre-independence in the 1950s to contemporary urban society in the 1990s — she demonstrates how each narrative is caught between nostalgia for the rapidly disappearing traditions of matriarchal society on the one hand, and a search for a new female modernity on the other. While each of the texts is thus representative of its individual historical moment, collectively they map the wider political shifts from colonialism to post-/neocolonialism, from tradition to modernity, and from matriarchy to patriarchy. Matip's autobiographical Ngonda (1958) is used to introduce a key dichotomy that underpins each of the subsequent texts: the idea of a matriarchal past that is gradually being usurped, but not entirely eradicated, by an increasingly Westernized present. Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles (1969) attempts to resolve these tensions through the concept of 'matriarcat nouveau', being the formation of 'a new "traditional" role for the contemporary African woman that maintains the positive aspects of tradition that were empowering to women while working to eliminate the more negative realities or those that now prove unsuitable in a changing world' (Toman, p. 64). Werewere Liking opts to piece back together fragments of the mythical past to create a rejuvenated reality, which is expressed both in her unique 'chant-romans', such as Elle sera de jaspe et de corail (1983), and in her day-to-day life as the Reine-Mère of Village Ki-Yi, a matriarchy-orientated cultural community. Calixthe Beyala's C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée (1987) and Tu t'appelleras Tanga (1988) locate the answer in female solidarity. Often misinterpreted by Western feminism as lesbianism, solidarity is seen instead as rooted in ritualistic matriarchal traditions adapted to respond to Cameroon's bleak urban present. Finally, Philomène Bassek's La Tache de sang (1990) shows the triumph of the 'modern' African woman over her former traditional self, yet simultaneously foregrounds the importance of this past by locating its trace elements within contemporary female relations. Toman's reading of this corpus thus demonstrates that the matriarchal past is not definitively lost, but remains embedded within, if necessarily transformed by, modern society. Importantly, by using Afrocentric anthropology to understand these literary works, Toman is able to write against and problematize Western-centric interpretations of African feminism, much of which accuses the female African 'other' of conceding too much to the African male. Instead, she posits that matriarchal traditions, with their emphasis on female solidarity, motherhood, and male–female complementarity, have the ability to empower women, and that Western feminism, as a result, has much to learn from her African 'sister'.