Community and Personal Identity in the works of African writers
With Special reference to, Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa.
The last twenty years has witnessed an explosive growth of interest in African literature.
There has been an outpouring of anthologies, papers and book length studies. This kind of the African Literature continuous to grow, and there is every reason to believe that the voice of the African writers will be heard and studied for a long time to come, as artist social analysts and literary critic. In this paper I want to write Community and personal identity in the works of African writers with special reference to Buchi Emechita and Flora N wapa .
The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voice rarely discussed and seldom accorded space or time for African women writers on the continent has come a tradition, implicit rather than formally stated. Bell hooks a renowned Afro American Feminist Ideologue and a distinguished profession of English at city College University of New York. In her book “Feminist Theory from Margin to center” criticized western domination in with in the women liberation movement in United States.
She said “There are white women who had never cosider resisting male domination until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should “
Her awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance, she grew up in Southern black Father dominated, working class house hold she experienced (her mother, sister and her brother) various dangers of patriarchal tyranny and it made her angry and raised her question the politics of male domination enabled her resist sexist socialization.
Privileged, and middle and upper class white women need the theory to inform than that they were oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression.
The fact that black women does not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of Feminism (many of black women does not know or use the term). Nor the fact that they have not had access to the machinery of power that they would allow to share their analysis or theories about gender with the American public.
Bell Hooks says “the understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young middle class white women. When I entered my first women studies class at Stanford University in early 1970’s white women were reveling in the joy of being together to them it was an important momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness.
I did not feel sympathetic to while peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experience of Black women.
“When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude to wards me and other non-white participates. White women did see equals; they did not treat us equals. But they expected and provide First hand accounts of black experience they felt it way their role to decide if these experiences were authentic”.
Chinua Achebe,s “Things fall Apart “ is the first title in Heinemann’s African writers series at the same time Flora N wapa’s Efru the first novel in the series by a women .
Heinemann’ was the major English publisher of African literature between 1958 and 1986. Flora N wapa was the first Female authored work in the series .The next work in the series by a women “Idu “ also by N wapa, did not appear until 1970, thirty male authored texts later. What are the factors to which the relativity small number of women authors can be attributed?
Male bias in education is clearly one such factor. Colonial policies in Africa favored the education of boys over girls and operated to cut women off from the written world. The same male bias is evident in education in postcolonial Nigeria. The number of women writing in Africa has always been rather small when compared with their male counter parts. The contributions of women to African literature have not been limited to the modern period. Women have always played considerable role, as storytellers and performers, in the oral traditions. The traditions always had significant place for the voice of the women singing or reciting tales from her own perspective as wife, mother and housekeepers. Flora N wapa’s two novels (Efru, Idue ) are the most imaginative and ambitious attempts in Nigeria and Africa as a whole to integrate oral forms with the literate design of the novel.
Flora N wapa was Africa’s first published female novelist. She was born in Ugwuta, Nigeria in 1913 in to wealthy family, the first daughter of six children, she educated in Nigeria finished her primary and secondary school in Ugwuta., Elelenwa and Lagos . She later studied English, History, and Geography, at University of Edinburgh where she obtained a diploma in education. Following her return from Scotland, she became an education officer in Calabar in 1958 and then proceeded to teach at Queen’s school Enugu in 1959. From 1962 to 1967 she held the position of assistant registrar at the University of Lagos, and it was during this period of her life her literary carrier was launched with the publication of her first novel Efru by Heinemann in 1966.
Flora N wapa’s personal life has therefore involved a certain degree of public service that has invite by exposed her to the works of public institution in contemporary Nigeria.
The life style in Nwapa’s cities is dominated by the continuous round of vicious sexual intrigues, tribal conflict and civil war, her choice of genre, are interwoven with her most fundamental perspectives. Her perception of contemporary in urban Nigeria demands a short story format, one that does not depend to any significant degree on the kind of oral modes that are so integral to much of Adoo’s Short fiction. It is a form at which reflects the largely literate, western middle class with in which her women move. In N wapa’s short story seems especially appropriate for brief even deliberately unfinished glimpses of urban life. The N wapa novel is a typical of the kind of African novel that resists purely western oriented approaches to the genre.
It has been a truism for some time now that the African novel is a western import, differing from the drama and the short story in that the latter have partly developed from ritual folk drama and the oral tale respectively. N wapa novels depend on a narrative form rooted in the oral modes of every day village life and in turn those oral forms are intrinsic to ever y details of women’s life. Unfortunately some writers in African writings have been taken the issues of social realism, the study of the novel from the west to Africa.
What may be socially unrealistic or romantic for the west reader is not necessarily so far the Yoruba reader of Amos Tutuola’s fiction. Similarly, the issues of individualism that so often dominate western society and literature are not always as crucial in novels by some African, The cultural destination that are involved here were summed up in 1938 by a young anthropologist, Jomo Kenyatta.
“If it is true that the European system of education aims at individuality, is it then to be wondered at that Europeans educated in this way have some difficulty in finding the right place for the original tribal relationships of the Africans? We may some up by saying that to the Europeans “individuality is the ideal of life” to the Africans the ideal is the relations with, and behavior to other people. No doubt education philosophy can make a higher synthesis in which these two grate truths are one, but the fact remains that while the Europeans place the emphasis on one side the Africans place it on the other “
The question which Kenyatta both rises and answers has immediate significance for the study of the novel in Africa. Give those organic tribal relationships which notes, how useful is it to discuss those African novels which describe traditional, or non westernized African society by applying to such novels those criteria of individualism which are so sacrosanct in western society and literature ? this kind of question that is being raised by a few critics in west itself , among them the American James Only who has emphasized what has always been obvious but not always conceded by western students of non western fiction . We argue with Kenyatta argument because study of those aspects of African literature which originate with and describe indigenous cultural traditions or the interaction between those traditions and non African civilizations. The plays of Whole Soyinka, for example much of Chinua Achebe’s fiction and all of Tutolas novels
Flora N wapa novels deserve special attention because they have been the most neglected yet the most striking examples of African novel writing manifested by motivated and shaped by a communal rather than predominately individualistic perspective. More specially, The N wapa novel is not so much a study of the individual as it is a resentment of the relationship between individual and community.
Her tittles “Efru” and “Idu” are likely to mislead those western readers whose literary experience may encourage the expectation that Nwapa, like her European predecessors, concentrate primarily on the individual’s private perceptions. Community’s collective perceptions of “Efru” or “Idu” are as crucial in the novels Theme an struggle as her relation to the community and its tradition. N wapa’s name little therefore identifies the focal point of the community attention as much as it pinpoint the individuals personal experience with in the community .To read the Nwapa novel is to be immersed to a remarkable degree in ceaseless flow of talk .N wapa leaves no doubt about the extent to which this oral format has been consciously incorporated with in her themes and narrative design. Betty Friedan’s in her book “The Feminine Mystic” argues and she criticized the main stream white women Feminist organizations
“Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who or most victimized by sexiest oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority .A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question without organized protest without collective anger or rage”.
The problem that has no name often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college educated middle and upper class, married white women house wives bored with leisure, with home , with children with buying products who wanted more out of life .Freidan concludes her first chapter by stating
“We can no longer ignore that voice with in women that says “I want something more than carries my husband and my children and my house”.
Friedan was a principle shaper of contemporary feminist thought significantly the one dimensional perspective on women’s reality presented in her book became a marked featured of the contemporary feminist movement White women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women’s reality is true to the lived experience of women as collective group.
The two West African women writers, Flora N wapa, Buchi Emechita have made their departure to alien lands in different directions. N wapa to America and Buchi Emechita to England .The divergent cultures and ideological fuzziness of the adopted cultures have made these writers contemplate problems of social justice and humanity in her charged contexts, The feminist environment in America or England has provided them with a scope to suggest alternative based on a combination of conformity and rebelliousness, facilitating comparisons with western feminism. The insight full critical enquiry made by those African women writers to suggest a distinct identity for their women needs to be studied at a time when problems of women have become global causes
Flora N wapa’s “Efru” is set in rural Igbo land in a town calls Ugwuta, the time of the novel is the late 1940’s and early 1950.In this novel she unveils the impact of colonial occupation but it is an average of rapid social and cultural transformations, remark such as “Things are changing fast these days serve as a refrain in the novel. She recreates Igbo social, political and religious life, and portraits the effects of colonialism on Igbo society. N wapa’s fiction places considerable emphasis on mother daughter relationships. Efru as a mother less girl her mother having died when her daughter was in child hood .Efru misses her mother ‘ the time her mother died is her first point of reference when made miserable by her inability to find fulfillment in marriage or mother hood ,she ravines her life in an attempt to locate her error . Efru development is delayed until she is well. On in her adult years because she has no mother .She denied patriarchal authority by marrying a poor former without her father‘s permission and without the bride price being paid him before marriage. Reading Efru from the vantage of N wapa’s
Later novels suggest that the death of Efru’s mother is also linked to the colonial oppression of women that it is symbolic of the decline in Igbo women’s power under colonial order. Efru story tells of a daughter’s search for a lost mother. It begins where Efru is on the verge of entering adult life, having decided to leave her father’s house for the second time divorced women. African women writes tend to the marriage not only race but also gender as developmental issue, thus for example N wapa provides a critique both of colonialism and of Igbo patriarchy through her depiction of the forces that inhibit female development.
Buchi Emechita :
Buchi Emechita is one of the most acclaimed writers in present times. A mid western Igbo Nigerian by birth, Buchi Emechita has written regularly for the lost more than three decades, she has gained international recognition through her writings. Her writings have been translated in to fourteen languages to date. These include thirteen novels three autobiographical works four children’s books .and collection of photographs. Her autobiographical works include her first two novels: “In the ditch” and Second class citizen”, Head above water: An autobiography. Her novels are the Bride price The slave girl The joys of mother hood , Destination Biafa, Double Yoke Our own freedom is a book of photographs of black women and numerous essays published in anthologies scholarly journals news papers and magazines in Africa, Australia Europe and United states
Born in Logos Nigeria on 21 July 1944, in the home of her parents Jermy Nwa Budike Emechita and Alice Ogbanje OjebetaEmechita, Buchi emechita’s own life reads like a Nigerian women’s success story.
The issue if Feminism in the novels of Buchi Emechita
As I discussed before the existing trend in the literary criticism of African women writing has largely been adopt a western feminist perspective. Reading African women’s writing with in a feminist frame work is a use full strategy because it introduce Gender as a fundamental category in literary analysis enabling the critic to see representations in texts as mediated by sexual difference and the political and aesthetic assumptions that surrounded gender .In her introduction to a collection of essays titled “Emerging perspectives on Buchi Emechita ” Marie Umeh observes that the novels of Buchi Emechta reflect what Kate Millet calls Sexual politics the patriarcheal principle by which all males dominate females and elders dominate the young ( Kate millet’s Sexual politics) .
Catharine Frank an American Feminist critic in her book “Women without men “The feminist novel in African literature today where she goes to the extreme point of adopting a totally western feminist perspective on African women writers and comes to the controversial conclusion that Emechita and other women writers of Africa are more radical than their western counterparts and embrace solution of women without men or lesbianism. To quote fully: The feminist novel in Africa is not only alive and well it is in general more radical, even more militant than its western counter parts ….
All these novels (by African women writers) embrace the solution of world without men. Men is enemy the exploiter and oppressor. Given the historically established and culturally sanctioned sexism of African society, there is no possibility of a compromise or even with the enemy. Instead, women must spurn patriarchy in its entire guise and create a safe sane supportive world of women. A world of mothers and daughters sisters and friends .This of course amounts to feminist separatism... A logical outcome of this ideology lesbianism”
It is important to note this basic ambiguity in Emechita’s assumption about the needs of her women because it suggests that she does not readily fit in to the ranks of those middle class feminists in the west who are now discovering her works. Buchi Emechita’s first novel “ In the ditch” was published 1977 six years after Ogot’s The promised land, and N wapa Efru. Asked an interview about her relationship to other female writers such as Flora N wapa , Emechita described herself as their new sister she acknowledge the debt to the women who have preceded her placing herself within the literary tradition that has emerged with her writing . Buchi Emechita declared Flora N wapa as a role model. She made a point of distancing herself from western feminism finally she declared If iam now feminist than I am an African feminist”.
The Joys of Mother hood is Emechita’s best known novel but it is also a work which is clearly influenced by Emechita’s reading of other African authors. N wapa Efru “The Joys of mother hood “confirms the existence of a female tradition in fiction; we can see the similarity of the protagonist’s psychological experience. In her Joys of mother hood main protagonist Nnu Ego is like Efru. She from an Igbo village from Emechita’s home town of Ibuza. Like Efru too she loses mother at an early age which leaves her dependent on her Father’s house on the failure of each marriage and for a time she too is held in disrepute by her inability to bear children
The Joys of mother hood protagonist Nnu Ego is the daughter of the slave master Agbadi, the grate chief of Ibuza. Feminism in the novels of Buchi emechita as we have discussed the prevailing trend in the literary criticism of African women’s writing has largely influenced western feminist perspective. On this issue from her well known essay title “Feminism with a small” f” “Being a women and African born I see things through an African women’s eye chronicle the little happening in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist but if iam now a feminist than an African feminist with small “f”
There are so many feminist women dogmas I believe in like education and the freedom of the individual in fact I am a feminist plus but there is no root in middle class feminist attitudes now for the black women plight. She says in the same interview and they are beginning to be proud of me although when I started they felt I was pushing into a man’s world. She is constantly pre occupied with the term feminism and expresses a recurrent sense of discomfort at being called a feminist to quote again “I did not start as a feminist I do not think I am one now most of my readers would take this to be the statement of a cowered. But it is not I thought before that I would like to be one but after my recent visit to the United states when I talked to read “Feminists” with a capital “F” I think we women of African background still have a very long way to go before we can really rub shoulders with such women . So my sister in America, I am not shunning your advanced help in fact I still think women of Africa need your contribution and at the same time we need our men”.
N wapa’s harsh realism results from her close involvement in public life in Nigeria. Her University education provided her with an opportunity to associate herself with public institution in Nigeria. Though she is basically indentified as a modern Nigerian writer, her concentration is on the lives of women in Nigeria’s modern urban life. Especially writes about communities expectations from its women as well as the women’s response to both the community and their own needs. Her women characters are extremely conscious of their bodies in relation to their roles as a wives and mothers. This body consciousness encourages them to accept their roles as inevitable and necessary.
Her novels “Efru” and “Idu” are fine example to access the nature of the narrative of domesticity .These women authoredneo works in colonial/ neo colonial situations insists on the virtues of their protagonists and on the complicated structural patterns of Igbo community .Her characters are strong individualized women who are not burdened with baggage of patriarchal societies .These women often question the general assumptions about women and their course of life without denying their Igbo identity and humanity .
Her female characters are extremely independent and have determine their course if life without denying their Igbo identity .The writers locate her ideal representation of Igbo female power and independence at the turn of the century .The actions of her female characters such as catalytic agents on the facts of other characters .Her women take center stage by exerting their industry ingenuity and resitence. Efru stands for self assertiveness, through continually circumscribed by the imperatives of male universe .She is attracted to tradition but is strong, independent and free spirited .She un conditionally accepts traditional practice such as circumcision and polygamy, beliefs and attitudes towards wife wood and infertility .
Being a black immigrant women in a white society, Emechita focuses her works on the lives and problems of Black immigrant women exclusively. Establishing her as a black British women writer .She often tries to bring about a fusion between original African culture and her adopted alien culture. She says” I keep my two worlds, my two cultures”. Emechita emphasizes the individual right to freedom of choice the slave girl is a board sexual archetype. Slavery is not simply a status or role in Emechita’s work but a condition. She ironically implies that women are their worst enemies because they lack the sprit to rebel.
Bibliography:
N wapa,Flora “ Efru” . African writer’s series: Heinemann, 1966.
N wapa,Flora “Idu “ African writers series: Heinemann , 1966.
Bell,Hooks “Feminist theory” south End press,Cambridge,1984.
Lloyd,W. Brown” Women writers in Black Africa” Golden wood press,London:1981.
Emechit,Buchi” Joys of mother hood” 1975.
Emechit,Buchi “ The Bride Price “ Allison and Busby, London,1976.
Emechit,Buchi “The second class citizen ,New York:1975.
Shyam. S Agarwalla ”The African fiction” Prestige, New Delhi.2006.
Bruci king & Kolawole ogum gbesan “A celebration of Black and African writing”
Oxford, 1975.
C L Innes “Critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe” Heinamann, 1979.
