Description
Book SynopsisMany women in cultures throughout the world exhibit resilience and power in the face of obstacles and vicissitudes. From colonial New Spain to postcolonial Africa and India,
Women and Contemporary World Literature examines ways in which women in literature function within their specific culture and circumstances to confront the challenges they encounter. In spite of fragmentation in their lives much like quiltmakers they piece together the scraps of their existence to form an integrated and complete whole. With its focus on power, fragmentation, and metaphor, and a strong interdisciplinary approach, this book offers a unique perspective to scholars, teachers, and students of comparative literature, contemporary world literature, colonial and postcolonial literature, women's studies, interdisciplinary studies, and literature and cultural studies.
Trade Review«Deborah Weagel has written an excellent theoretical study of postcolonial women and women characters starting from perhaps the earliest woman to express postcolonial sentiments, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana is a forerunner of the ideas of chronologically postcolonial names such as Camara Laye’s mother, Dâman Sadan, and the women characters in the work of Mariama Bâ, Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, and Rohinton Mistry. With swift and sure theoretical command, Weagel studies the negotiations of power between and among binaries. Her book will make a serious and significant contribution to the study of postcolonial and comparative literatures and also to women’s studies. I recommend the work to scholars and students alike.» (Feroza Jussawalla, Author of ‘Family Quarrels: Towards a Criticism of Indian Writing in English’ and Editor of ‘Interviews with Writers of the Postcolonial World’)
