Feminist and Womanist Criticism
of African Literature:
A Bibliography
By Sharon Verba
July 20, 1997
Methodology
This bibliography is, in every sense of the word, selective. African authors were included if an article (in English or French) could be located which discussed him or her from the angle of feminism, womanism, or the treatment of gender. Authors were not excluded or included on any other basis, including race and gender. Interviews were included for many of the female writers because such interviews often are a main source of feminist thought (their own) on their works. The sources I used to find these articles were the bibliographies of African literature located in the journal Callaloo (1987-89 and 1990-93), the MLA Bibliography, the African studies bibliographies for the years 1995-96, the CD-Rom resource Women's Resources International, 1972-August 1996, as well as various library catalogs for monographs, whether collections or single-authored. In addition, I scanned the bibliographies of articles and books to find other relevant citations. There are several good bibliographies which focus, at least in part, on feminist criticism of African literatures from the 1970s through the mid 1980s. Brenda Berrian's Bibliography of African Women Writers and Journalists, Carole Boyce Davies' "A Bibliography of Criticism and Related Works" in Ngambika, and Barbara Fister's bibliography on criticism in Third World Women's Literature in combination cover this earlier period very thoroughly. I did not use these bibliographies to compile this one; to avoid excess duplication, I have focused on criticism published from 1980 on and simply cite these earlier bibliographies at the end of this one, although I am sure some duplication has occurred.
This bibliography is organized by authors and also includes a section on general works, which is organized first by those which cover African literatures without focusing on a specific country, region or author, then by region, and then individual countries. Works of criticism are placed in this section if they refer to several authors/works from the continent, a particular region, or country. If an article focuses on four or fewer authors, it is included under the name of each author.
The bibliography includes articles on eighty-seven individual authors, as well as general articles on Africa, East Africa, North Africa, West Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Somali, South Africa, and Zimbabwe; it cites more than four hundred articles and monographs. It is interesting to compare the authors found in this bibliography with the ninety-five authors found in the biography section of Hans Zell's A New Reader's Guide to African Fiction (1st ed., 1971; 2nd rev. ed.,1983). The authors in Zell's work are often considered the early canon of African literatures. Only twenty-five authors appear in both the current bibliography and Hans Zell's Guide. There may be several reasons for this difference. Many of the authors included in my bibliography were not then considered a part of the canon of African literature; and a few had not even published at the time Zell's work appeared. Carole Boyce Davies also offers an insight which may explain the lack of overlap. She notes in her introduction to Ngambika that one of the priorities of African feminist literary criticism is "the development of a canon of African women writers and a parallel canon of critical works with the final aim of expanding the African literary canon" (14). The Guides were compiled in the early years of this expansion, and it is quite possible that today the lists would be more reflective of each other. At the same time, many African women writers actively rebuke attempts to place African men on the defensive, arguing that a critical approach to literature (as well as other social, political, and cultural expressions) must explore the strengths of both African women and African men. While feminist criticism does focus on male authors, it more often strives to bring to the forefront of literary discussions the works of female African authors and the strong, individualistic portrayals of women they offer.