Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision, 1960–2000

Contents

Preface vii Analyzed Works xi Introduction: Writing Women’s Rites and Rights 3 Dissecting Anthills of Insurrection 3 Traditional Discourses of Female Genital Excision 8 Colonial and Anticolonial Discourses of Female Genital Excision 14 Feminist and Human Rights Discourses of Female Genital Excision 17 Postcolonial Discourses of Female Genital Excision 21 Three Literary “Generations”Writing on Female Genital Excision 25 v Contents Chapter 1: Denunciations of Colonization and Hesitant Feminist Criticism in Early Literary “Circumscriptions” of Female Genital Excision (1963–1974) 27 Excised Women’s Bodies as Pamphlets of Ethnicity in the Kenyan Struggle for Independence (Ngugi, Waciuma, and Likimani) 31 Two Exceptional Women’s Alternative Gender Scripts (Nwapa and Njau) 59 The First Generation: Cultural Ambassadors, Cautious Critics 73 Chapter 2: Growing Feminist Disenchantment in Literary Explorations of Female Genital Excision around the UN Decade for Women (1968–1988) 76 Immobile Women’s Moving Narratives (Kourouma, Farah, El Saadawi, and Maïga Ka) 80 Captive/ating Women Warriors (Farah, El Saadawi, Beyala, and Rifaat) 114 The Second Generation: Resistance against National and Gender Oppression 148 Chapter 3: The Globalization of the Literary Debate on Female Genital Excision at the Close of the Twentieth Century (1982–1998) 151 African American Fictionalizations of a “Culturally Challenging”Practice (Walker, Naylor, and Clarke and Dickerson) 155 Cultural Complications in Fiction by Other Women of African Descent (Accad, Herzi, and Keïta) 176 The Third Generation: Affinities across the Diaspora . . . and through Time 193 Conclusion 196 Notes 203 References 231 Index 249 vi Contents ...