Description
Book SynopsisHow did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? This title challenges the notion of homogeneous 'African women's experience'.
Trade ReviewThis volume is a good example of what can be learned from and about a previously mute and oppressed constituency: native women in colonized sub—Saharan Africa. As is common in anthologies, the quality of the essays is uneven, although (or because?) the editors conscientiously strove for breadth in terms of topics, regions, and nationality of the colonial powers. The introduction neatly summarizes the theme and something of the evolution of the volume. The authors set their chapters in temporal and cultural context, and ample endnotes are helpful but do not interfere with the generally clear and well—organized exposition. Specific topics range from women's roles in a grass—roots army of national liberation, loss of queen—mothers as checks on tribal regents, linguistic play as part of a local rebellion against political corruption, midwifery as a new and culturally conflicted role, and compulsory examination of travelers for sexually transmitted diseases, among others. Recurrent is the pattern that traditionally dominant local males acceded to (or encouraged?) economic and other domination of women on the part of European colonizers. This is an interesting and revealing exploration of an important population that has long been neglected. All levels and collections.
-- D. B. Heath * Choice *
This is an interesting and revealing exploration of an important population that has long been neglected. All levels and collections.December 2002
* Choice *
Table of ContentsPreliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi
Part 1. Encounters and Engagements
1. "What My Heart Wanted": Gendered Stories of Early Colonial Encounters in Southern Mozambique Heidi Gengenbach
2. Dynastic Daughters: Three Royal Kwena Women and E. L. Price of the London Missionary Society, 1853-1881 Wendy Urban-Mead
3. Colonial Midwives and Modernizing Childbirth in French West Africa Jane Turrittin
Part 2. Perceptions and Representations
4. The Politics of Perception of Perception as Politics?: Colonial and Missionary Representations of Baganda Women, 1900-1945 Nakanyike Musisi
5. "The Woman in Question": Marriage and Identity in the Colonial Courts of Northern Ghana, 1907-1954 Sean Hawkins
6. Colonialism, Education, and Gender Relations in the Belgian Congo: The Évolué Case Gertrude Mianda
7. Virgin Territory?: Travel and Migration by African Women in Twentieth Century Southern Africa Teresa Barnes
8. "When in the White Man's Town": Zimbabwean Women Remember Chibeura Lynette Jackson
Part 3. Power Reconfigured/Power Contested
9. Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of Women's Political Power in Nineteenth Century East Africa Holly Hanson
10. Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Terrain: Reconfigurations of Power and Authority in Early Colonial Asante Victoria Tashjian and Jean Allman
11. "Vultures of the Marketplace": Southeastern Nigerian Women and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaayi (Women's War) of 1929 Misty Bastian
12. "Emancipate Your Husbands!": Women and Nationalism in Guinea, 1953-1958 Elizabeth Schmidt
13. Guerrilla Girls and Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle Tanya Lyons
Afterword Susan Geiger
Contributors
Index
