Women Writers in Francophone Africa (review)

Abstract

The back cover of Women Writers in Francophone Africa proclaims the work to be "the first comprehensive study of women's writing in francophone sub-saharan Africa." This is only one of the many contradictory aspects of the book, for on the very first page, Nicki Hitchcott cites two important studies that precede her own, Irène D'Almeida's Francophone African Women WritersDestroying the Emptiness of Silence (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1994), and Odile Cazenave's Femmes rebellesnaissance d'un nouveau roman africain au féminin (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996). Most contradictory, however, is Hitchcott's analysis of the function of gender in texts by Bâ, Beyala, Liking, Sow Fall, and others. While Hitchcott is sensitive to the fact that "any study of African women's writing which ignores the socio-cultural context of its production is not an activity which is ideologically acceptable" because such a study "would deservedly lead to accusations of social and literary imperialism" by producing limited readings of the texts (6), the almost exclusive use of Western feminist frameworks in this book has the very effect it purports to avoid. Indeed, even as it quotes Susan Andrade's assertion that "the cultural heterogeneity of Africa and African women must be foregrounded in any discussion of their literature" (qtd. 6), it ignores that advice and goes on to seek out a "provisional definition of African female subjectivity" using Anglo-American feminist and at times French feminist theory, while African, African-American, and so-called "Third-World" feminisms are marginalized. For example, Alice Walker's "womanism" does not even surface until page 158 in the final chapter of the work. This is ironic, given that Hitchcott also cites Mohanty's condemnation of "Western" feminism as well as Achebe's call for humility on the part of European critics when approaching African texts.