Writing against the Grain: African Women's Texts on Female Infibulation as Literature of Resistance

Sandra Ponzanesi
Additional contact information
Sandra Ponzanesi: Belle van Zuylen Institute, Research Centre for Multicultural and Comparative Gender Studies, Universtity of Amsterdam, Rokin 84-90,1012 KX Amsterdam, Netherlands

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2000, vol. 7, issue 2, 303-318

Abstract: This article looks at representations of female infibulation in African literary texts, and offers analyses of three such texts: Nawal El Saadawi's The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (1980), Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) and Sirad S. Hassan's Sette Gocce di Sangue: Due Donne Somale (Seven Drops of Blood: Two Somali Women) (1996). Writing from a location in the West to which we have migrated, this is an attempt to employ literature as a device of resistance, and it also refers to writing as a process through which women can become aware of their potentia (Foucault), thereby contributing to their own empowerment and that of their own community.

Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/097152150000700210 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indgen:v:7:y:2000:i:2:p:303-318

DOI: 10.1177/097152150000700210

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Indian Journal of Gender Studies from Centre for Women's Development Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().