Stories of Women Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation /
Boehmer, Elleke,1961-
Elleke Boehmer's work on the crucial intersections between independence, nationalism and gender has already proved canonical in the field. 'Stories of women' combines her keynote essays on the mother figure and the postcolonial nation, with incisive new work on male autobiography, 'daughter' writers, the colonial body, the trauma of the post-colony, and the nation in a transnational context. Focusing on Africa as well as South Asia, and sexuality as well as gender, Boehmer offers fine close readings of writers ranging from Achebe, Okri and Mandela to Arundhati Roy and Yvonne Vera, shaping these into a critical engagement with theorists of the nation such as Fredric Jameson and Partha Chatterjee. Moving beyond cynical deconstructions of the post-colony, the book mounts a reassessment of the post-colonial nation as a site of potential empowerment, as a ‘paradoxical refuge’ in a globalised world. It acts on its own impassioned argument that post-colonial and nation-state studies address substantively issues hitherto raised chiefly within international feminism.
Description based upon print version of record.
Introduction -- 1. Motherlands, mothers and nationalist sons: theorising the en-gendered nation -- 2. 'The master's dance to the master's voice': revolutionary nationalism and women's representation in Ngugi wa Thiong'o -- 3. Of goddesses and stories: gender and a new politics in Achebe -- 4. The hero's story: the male leader's autobiography and the syntax of postcolonial nationalism -- 5. Stories of women and mothers: gender and nationalism in the early fiction of Flora Nwapa -- 6. Daughters of the house: the adolescent girl and the nation -- 7. Transfiguring: colonial body into postcolonial narrative -- 8. The nation as metaphor: Ben Okri, Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera -- 9. East is east: where postcolonialism is neo-orientalist - the cases of Sarojini Naidu and Arundhati Roy -- 10. Tropes of yearning and dissent: the inflection of desire in Yvonne Veraand Tsitsi Dangarembga -- 11. Beside the west: postcolonial women writers in a transnational frame -- 12. Conclusion: defining the nation differently -- Select bibliography -- Index.
Elleke Boehmer's work on the crucial intersections between independence, nationalism and gender has already proved canonical in the field. 'Stories of women' combines her keynote essays on the mother figure and the postcolonial nation, with incisive new work on male autobiography, 'daughter' writers, the colonial body, the trauma of the post-colony, and the nation in a transnational context. Focusing on Africa as well as South Asia, and sexuality as well as gender, Boehmer offers fine close readings of writers ranging from Achebe, Okri and Mandela to Arundhati Roy and Yvonne Vera, shaping these into a critical engagement with theorists of the nation such as Fredric Jameson and Partha Chatterjee. Moving beyond cynical deconstructions of the post-colony, the book mounts a reassessment of the post-colonial nation as a site of potential empowerment, as a ‘paradoxical refuge’ in a globalised world. It acts on its own impassioned argument that post-colonial and nation-state studies address substantively issues hitherto raised chiefly within international feminism.
Electronic reproduction.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-234) and index.
Description based on print version record.
Nationalism in literature.
Postcolonialism in literature.
Sex role in literature.
English literature
Also available in print form.


Open Access