It's hard to promote African women authors, Checole explained. These women are first-rate talent, but the market does not recognise them. One writer whose work managed to catch the eye of the prestigious Kirkus Reviews was Magona. Checole said that the literary hopes of emerging African women authors rest with small publishing houses like his own, for the time being. Yet these small firms do not have the clout with major newspapers and magazines that draw attention to new talent or even to older, experienced authors like Pegram who has been publishing her work since the 1960s.
Language is another problem.
Stories in Xhosa, a South African language, or Igbo of Nigeria, are hard sells. And then we come back to the menace of illiteracy. African women aren't writing novels because they don't know how to write. But, said Micere Githae Mugo, that is not a significant barrier. The main problem is that we don't offer ourselves as scribes to their stories.