Masculinities in African Literary and Cultural Texts ed. by Helen Nabasuta Mugambi and Tuzyline Jita Allan (review)

Masculinities in African Literary and Cultural Texts is divided into two parts: “Configuring Masculinity in Orature and Film” and “Writing the Masculine.” Its eighteen chapters offer a succinct survey of the construction and manifestations of the masculine in Africa by examining diverse creative writing: oral pieces (epics, folktales, songs) as well as films by African writers and filmmakers. The list of contributors includes some of the most renowned scholars of African culture, among them A. C. Kalu, T. J. Allan, Bernth Lindfors, Simon Gikandi, and Tanure Ojaide. Introductions to the contributions explain the cultural and narrative significance of each piece. This anthology complements earlier, more theoretical and historical works on masculinity, such as Lisa Lindsay and Stephan Miescher’s Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (Heinemann, 2003) or Lahoucine Ouzgane and Robert Morrell’s African Masculinities: Men in Africa from Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (Palgrave McMillan, 2005).

In a chapter titled “‘Ndabaga’ Folktale Revisited: (De)Constructing Masculinity in the Post-Genocide Rwandan Society,” R. B. Gallimore relies on semiotics to examine the tale of the female character, Ndabaga, in her quest for masculinity. Ndabaga disguises herself as a young man in order to take the place of her aging father in the military because the father and his wife could not produce a son. Ndabaga is trapped between a masculine identity she cannot acquire and a feminine one she has denied, rejected, and compromised. A woman of valor, her secret is eventually uncovered by the other warriors whose ranks she joins. Even though she beats all in archery and other physical tests, by the end of the story she is domesticated and feminized when the king, having heard about her disguise and her prowess, encourages her to leave the military—men’s domain—and get married and become a mother. Indeed, by the end he himself woos her and she ends up marrying him and carrying his child. Gallimore shows how the tale exemplifies gender as a biological construct and in turn the implications for society and individual identity. Beyond its original significance, the tale has special meaning for today’s Rwandan women who were just “born”—recreating anew their identities after a genocide in which millions died, most of them males. With 70 percent of the nation’s households headed by women, Rwandan women have been transformed into “Ndabagas,” forced to assume masculine roles to sustain their families and a decimated society. Significantly, it took a group of Rwandan female ex-combatants from various opposing military units to make the story of Ndabaga part of the national conversation about reconstruction and reconciliation. Together they founded the Ndabaga Association to bring a female perspective in advocating for other women combatants, overcoming poverty, and restoring the economy. Their efforts were seen as one catalyst for the Rwandan government’s ratification of the 2003 constitution, which mandated that women make up 30 percent of the leadership at all levels.

In “Women, Men and Exotopy: On the Politics of Scales in Nurrudin Farah’s Maps,” Peter Hitchcock focuses on the relationship between space and gender, how the feminine and masculine act as variable social markers. Farah’s vision in that novel suggests that Somalia can be mapped fruitfully as a spatial imaginary with fluid meanings of gender and nation. The novel serves as a site for meditation over an archetypal failed state.

These are but two of the diverse riches of this remarkable book. One comes to the volume perhaps intrigued at first by its large general proposition, the claims of its title; but one returns to it repeatedly to ponder the rich array of distinct examples of how the masculine is constructed, enacted, and practiced across a wide range of African cultural expressions.