Women and War in Contemporary Love Stories from Uganda and Nigeria

This essay puts contemporary women's short fiction from Uganda and Nigeria in conversation through the analysis of literary representations of love in the context of war. Proposed here is a mode of reading the love story by reflecting more generally upon narrative's relation to political turmoil, violence, and conquest. Addressing the underlying theme of love as a creative stimulus for self-expression, it explores the potential of women's love stories from Uganda and Nigeria to resist, and sometimes resolve, conflict. Though Nigeria and Uganda share similarities with regards to their social, cultural, and economic conditions, as well as their colonial histories, the extent of their literary output differs considerably. In comparison to Uganda where there has been a revival of literature only relatively recently, Nigerian writing has already altered the collective social body and even the land itself has been transformed under its influence. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Ugandan writers looked at in this essay write about issues concerning daughters confronting the challenges of a modern world. Theirs is an internalized narrative, one that acknowledges that social and political change begins from within the self and the ability to raise one's voice above that of the mainstream. Their Nigerian counterparts, by comparison, write from the point of view of the mother who struggles to keep together and shepherd her dependents in moments of disunity and national crises. When considered together, Nigerian and Ugandan texts occasion a rare possibility to discuss the shifts in African women's writing in times of Civil War and regional conflict. The concerns shared by women writers from both countries point to the benefits gained from transnational dialogue, especially within equatorial Africa. However sober the writing from Uganda seems by comparison to the more idealistic vision from Nigeria, all narrators considered in this essay stand out as women in control of their destinies, women of personal integrity and self-worth. By engaging in the cultural and socio-political transformation of Uganda and Nigeria as evident in the literature of some of their contemporary women authors, this essay aims to embrace a new vision of what constitutes love and how subjects express it.

Though universal, the portrayal of love is far from inclusive. Buchi Emecheta gives voice to the erroneous belief that literary love is the domain of the West when she notes in her autobiography that as a young woman she equated England with romance and the typical Englishman with Mr. Darcy.¹ As defined and informed by its chivalric, European origins, there is seldom an African presence in romantic fiction. Fiction, including romantic fiction, is monopolized not only by white authors, but by white, male authors, notes Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi in the preface to Gender in African Women's Writing.² The overall aim here is not only to shift focus from the white, male world of fiction from last century to the black, female world of today (although this in itself would be a worthy pursuit considering the still disproportional weight toward Eurocentric, male authors in literature departments around the world), but to contribute to a new appreciation of the love story as a textual antidote to war. For the purpose of this discussion, the meaning of war is diverse, ranging from armed conflict in which women fall victim as civilians to women's own struggle or "war" for control over their bodies and their sexuality. In her discussion of Ama Ata Aidoo's novel Changes—A Love Story, Nfah-Abbenyi argues that the author's portrayal of love is political for many reasons, not least because it is informed by a cultural and socio-historical context beyond any individual's control.³ Similar claims can be made about the stories discussed in this essay with one significant difference. Politicized without doubt, love as narrated by Monica Arac de Nyeko, Doreen Baingana, SefiAtta, and Anthonia Kalu is also there for pleasure alone, as part of "the human condition," as Aidoo herself writes in the introduction of the recently published anthology African Love Stories.⁴ Paradoxically, however, it is precisely...