Feminism with a Big “F”: Ethics and the Rebirth of African Feminism in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

The 21st century has seen an outpouring of works by African women writers and many of them have been unabashedly feminist. These works have one thing in common: they tell of bodies in pain and they provoke pertinent ethical questions in that regard. This article examines Chika Unigwe’s novel, On Black Sisters’ Street, and argues that it belongs to the new generation of African women’s writing that recasts feminism as a moral issue of our times. The novel draws attention to some of the central issues of feminism: rights and dignities of the body of woman. In so doing, it establishes women’s rights as fundamental human rights that have to be addressed in Africa.