Towards a new feminist practice in Africa: The women writing Africa project1

Abstract

This article looks at the Women Writing Africa project as both a response to prevailing assumptions about the African woman as abject and helpless, and as a positive reinforcement of women's agency in an African context. I read the two texts that represent the project thus far (Women Writing Africa: the Southern Region and Women Writing Africa West Africa and the Sahel) as indicative of a new African feminism, one that foregrounds women's writing, in all its forms, as a means whereby to re‐envision African women, to invoke women's writing as evidence of women's strength and diversity, and to re‐imagine the African continent as a place in which women have been active participants in its history and culture.