HER MOTHER'S DAUGHTER: THE AFRICAN WRITER AS WOMAN
by
CHIOMA OPARA
Please be mindful that parts of
chapter 9 were distorted in the process of program-transfer.
9.
Echoes of the Whip in Chinyere Okafor’s He Wants to Marry Me Again
and Zaynab
Alkali’s Cobwebs and Other Stories
Paternalism has many forms, but the line is essentially the same.
The slave-owner is the affectionate father until the slaves rebel.
-Sheila Rowborharn
A palpable trope of pain and punishment, the whip evokes material.
cultural, physical, psychological and formative scourge. The pain of
poverty has been borne by women in patriarchal and capitalist societies
all over the world. As we have earlier pointed out, capitalism as an
institution benefits largely from low-income informal employments. Such
employments have placed women at a great disadvantage on the domestic
scene. Women’s unpaid work as Stevi Jackson would put it
‘is expropriated by their husbands” (333). Representing the
greatest sufferers of poverty, women constitute half of the
world’s population and iead one third of patriarchal inclined
households. Much as they are responsible for nearly half of the global
produciton, they paradoxically earn only about a tenth of the
world’s total income and an infinitesimal iroportion - one
hundredth - of the world’s property. international Zabour
Organization (ILO) statistics have shown that only about one
‘ercent of the world’s assets belong to women. Wearing a
female visage, overty is, as it were, said to be feminized To quote
Elzbieta ?uchnarewicz at length:
The tenn “feminization of poverty” is applied to describe
tendencies appearing in different societies in the world. There is a
rule that states that out of families below the poverty line, more and
more arc those headed by women and especially single mothers. Some
rural women in Africa are in such social and economic position.
117
_______J
Average income of households led by tnem is very low and money remitted
by migrating husbands is not substantial and regular. So peasant women
are often obliged to look for additional sources of income and take
jobs as farm workers. Despite the additional sources of income, the
family continues to live in poverty (100).
Feminization of poverty is writ large in post-colonial African
socheconomic processes. Its relevance to the Nigerian society is
uscernibie::
the prevalent rural—urban drifl. Consider, for example, Molara
OgundinLeslie comments on the impact of IMF loan and the attendant debt
crh on African women in the following statement:
The debt crisis, the structural adjustmcct policies and the resultant
devaluation of our currencies; the loss of jobs, the immeseration of
the African countries... are all impacting the most on women: irstiy as
mothers, wives and economic producers who now have dependencies thrust
upon them; secondly as dependents witbin patriarchial or other family
structures.... Women become the most affected as home makers, nurturers
of children, and economic workers in town and country, in fields and
markets. (249)
Women are, therefore, flagrantly whipped victims in the manifo.:
economic structures of postcolonial Africa.
Our discussion in this chapter Wii be based on the concer:
efforts of two Nigerian female writers — Chinyere Grace Okafor a
Zaynab Alkali - in dealing with the different levels of poverty in thr:
short stories. The whip stands out as a dominant metaphor in their prcc
fiction. Overwhelmed by the cultural, economic and social demands
living, their female characters contend with a postcolonial society t
whips them in varied forms. Against the background of mater
flagellation, the whip—lash of feminized poverty and patriarc
subjugation, the authors prescribe a female whiphand predicated on
Nwapan “teaciiers’ whips”. Simply put femate
education is ?;ojectec the filh o economic empowerment, which is
starkly cothrasted n poverty ?nd deprivation.
118
Images of grime, poverty and pain abound in Okafor’ s collection
f sbort stories, He Wants to Marry Me Again, which is divided into two
rns-Mothers and Fathers; Teachers and Learners. Three out of the four
ces in part I (Mothers and Fathers) - “The Kolanuts are All
Dead”
surrection Before Burial”, “Over his own Dead Body” -
spell doom d decay. The title story “He wants to marry me
Again” opens the saga f the Nigerian woman impoverished by the
economic structure and also bnpped psychologically by her man. The
younger woman in the frame urv and the older one in the embedded story
are both victims of male rachery. The moral depravity in society is
gauged by the squalid state the environment. It is indeed an unjust
society where according to the
ics of the taxi driver’s song:
Poor man dey suffer
Monkey dey work
Baboon dey chop (14)
Vhile in the public realm, the baboon symbolizes the capitalist
pressors and the monkey, the suffering masses, in the domestic realm
ioma, the repressed wife, is the suffering monkey and her
husband’s r,cubines eblemise the frolicking baboons. Ivuoma has
been exploited
expropriated by her husband who in turn has been sapped by his arasitic
girl friends.
Ivuama’s education has been truncated by an early marriage and
onsequene she is treated by her husband as “a common dog who eats
:it” (15). It is not surprising that deserted by her husband
after bearing : a children for him, she sees herself as a suffering
monkey. Okafor asts Ivuorna as a foil to the older unnamed hero of the
embedded story, This woman had in the course of a turbulent marriage,
woven her basket
bearing the teachers’ whips and learning to survive outside
marriage. Fiora I’wapa in One is Enough makes a fine distinction
between the Jiterate and educated mind:
I thought they said that those who went to schooi did not get angry,
that they controlled their temper, unlike us wno did not see the inside
of a classroom nor bore the teachers’ whips (14; my emphasis).
119
The teacher’s whip, an emblem of formal education, is visib
underscored by Okafor in her prose for it moulds the female psyche one
weaves one’s basket for life’s bumps and bends. The
embedded stor of the middle-aged woman who doggedly weaves her basket
by bearir:
the teachers’ whips is a femalist success story. Education places
her at - pedestal in a revered space and in the end her estranged
husband desire to marry her again. There can be no doubt that the
successful middle- aged woman has risen above the heavy yoke of poverty.
Indices of poverty and hard life are glaring in Mamma Ugos
‘coarse hands and wrinkly rough skin” in “The
Kolanuts are All Dead” We are told that ‘the woman’s
hancs [were] hardened by hard work an her skin wrinkled by
suffering” (36). Mamma Ugo’s poignant tale is underscored
by the loneliness of widowhood. The educated single woman, Chigo, whose
mother Nne Ukwu is also a widow empathizes with Mamma Ugo “of her
own age who had been ravaged by the travails of marriage, poverty and
widowhood (‘35). Whipped by these travails. Mamma Ugo finds
solace in the ambience of uwa umunwanyi or women’s world created
in the matriarchal household of Nne Ukwu as she directs the kolanut
ceremonies. This is resonant of Okafor’s “Beyond Child
Abuse”where a typically female world is created. Women hold
meetings to articulate their predicament with great poignancy and
dramatic effect. The spiritual ambience of this world is particularly
proffered by the aquatic ecology of the setting as well as the numinous
spark of the female self.
Clearly the scintillating dynamism of vibrant African womanhood is
reflected in the portraiture of Nne Ukwu which denotes Great mother.
The spiritual image of Nne Ukwu evokes that of Eagle woman in
Ezeigbo’s Children of the Eagle. In the vein of the ageing
Eaglewoman, the old matriarch Nne Ukwu “caters for our spiritual
needs.... With age she grows nearer and nearer to God. Her words are
potent” (38). With a lot of protest and reluctance, Nne Ukwu is
uprooted from her spiritual hearth to Chigo’s residence in Lagos.
The unhealthy synthesis of the two worlds precipitates enormous
psychological disorder in both women. Things fall apart and the
kolanuts get wrinkled in the flagellatory transition.
120
Germane to female spirituality is the dynamic of healing. Female
nurses, and a female doctor provide the prop for the ailing patient,
Chigo. Dr. Taiye Oladimej i, a victim of a debilitating marriage found
solace in her healing job: she found an appreciative husband in her
studies and work (50). In the same vein, Nurse Anasta is given the whip
hand in her marriage where roles are reversed. A breadwinner, Anasta is
crowned the queen of her household by her mother-in-law. Anasta in this
capacity sees herself as “very powerful” (61), She secures
a gardening job for her diminishing husband. She, in fact, crowns
herself a real king. This tallies with the “portrait
she—men and the ‘he—woman” denoting emasculated
men and virilised women. (See Ogunyemi 1996; 308).
Likewise, woman becomes a transsexual in “She is a Man” by
virtue of her education and position in society. Madame Nne Okoruwa, a
university don, is addressed as a man by her male gardener saddled with
a wife and seven hungry children who hunt rats and lizards for food in
nearby bushes in a society which the author limns as stinking and
corrupt. Okafor, in an interview concedes, “I am interested in
raising the consciousness of the undeiprivileged like women and the
masses.” (Rabiu 3). Carla Comellini, on her own part, notes that:
Okafor’s theatre as well as her poetry and fiction deals with
contemporary social problems and
‘conflicts; in fact, her entire literary work stresses those
motifs and themes connected to women’s
isolation or to their role in society. (2000; 42).
Surely the conflicts are encapsulated in the various wars in society -
War against Dirt (WAD); War against Hunger (WAH); War against Rats
(WAR). It would appear that the author shares Ogundipe-Leslie’s
view that, “It is a Nigerian national sport to make acronyms of
everything.” 189) Towing the line, Ogundipe-Leslie coins yet
another acronym SOSA—Stories of Structural Adjustment.
The Nigerian society delineated in Okafor’s fiction is branded by
Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) otherwise labelled Suffering
Adjustment and Poverty. The glut of rats in this society denotes gnawing
121
fetidity and atrophy. The rat allegory is comically dramatized in
“Ra Come in Anger” where the gnawing rat, a symbol of dirt,
deprivation an:
disease wages a war against the infested professor. The hole made by
the rat evokes the image of the map of Africa and even the map of
Nigeria The professor’s office is therefore a locale of the
NigerianJAfricr putridity, which debilitates the perspicacious female
mind. The Ivo Tower incidentally is not immune to the general malaise
plaguing the country. This is graphically portrayed in “Champagne
for Men OnJv where a female university lecturer, Chizzy, is a victim of
sexu! harassment. The Chairman, her Head of Department, relentlessly
lusa after her “fleshy body” dubbed by her oppressor as
champagne.
objectification of womanhood. Although Chizzy’s education steels
her she crumbles under a psychosomatic disorder. Frantz Fanon contends
his analysis of the colonial war and attendant mental disorder amont
repressed Algerians that, “The name ‘psychosomatic
pathology’ is give to the general body of organic disorders, the
development of which favoured by a conflicting situation”. This
disorder manifests in n highly traumatized and whipped Chizzy in an
irregular menstrual flow
is not fortuitous that as Chizzy complains to her doctor, both of trrr
gaze at the map of Nigeria hanging in the doctor’s consulting r:
This, in effect, could be viewed as a transference of the pathology.
The pathological disorder is not only diagnosed in the ferrL body but
also in the ailing Nigerian territory. The ailment is discernis
the crass insensitivity of the leaders manifested in oppression, ins
corruption, deprivation and concomitant wanton destruction heigh:
by hunger. University students go on rampage as a result of poveit. ni
hunger. As is the case with all facets of violence, woman is invar
‘ the inalienable victim. The food store of C100 bungalow
occupie: Madame, Nne Okoruwa, is broken into by the irate hungry
students.
Clearly the atmosphere is as tense as it is volatile in prac::
all the stories in Okafor’s collection. Festus Iyayi deftly avers
that:
There is a strand that runs through the stories, sometimes like a puff
of cloud in the wind and at other times, like a torrent in a storm. It
is the strand of the pain that injustice and opnresslon breed in the
relationships between
indi’viduals or between groups in the same society (6).
122
his Own Dead Body”. Yinko is as spiritual as her husband Mr
n:Jele is worldly. Entrenched in the muddy world of polidcs,
• o:dele has emotionally wTh1ipped his wife and torn the fabric of
the
- y apart like a “shattered cay pot” (82). Yinka’s
emotional
- ccation flnds expression in her awn room which “has become
ohologicaily stifling and physiologically oppressive to her”
(79). A as is implicitly drawn between the private domain of family
life and
- violent public arena of national politics. The politically paranoid
zndeie subordinates the .nrcner iO the latter leaving his wife Vinka,
- totally drained and destitute in the same manner posteolonial African
:aders would leave their subjects perennially ueprised and
.-Jiusiorcd. In a rimilar execesis of Okafor’s novella Ogiir b
choice
- neilmi alludes to “the nosicoon 4fnean reality, which is often
::s astated by conflicts, tormented and torn U con1 wars or ruled by
-anncai leaders” (97). Soupeons a ec;niiat can be gleaned from
aundeie’s absurd behaviour in ifls home. Linking this conflict
and attendant violence with the phallus. Okafor subtly draws an analogy
between “something dangling between his thighs” and the
matchets Jangling in his hands (87). In the vein of Akachi Ezeigbo,
Okafor takes a peak beneath the veneer of male hubris by stripping the
hysterical Ogundele who is frenzied over the news of the coup
d’etat:
Ogundele has only his pants on for he was about to get dressed when tao
radio announcement interrupted him. In excitement, he has rushed to
Dapo’s room jumping up and down like a mentaiiy deranged or
possessed man. Dapo regards his “oaken” father skipping
like a monkey taunted with banana and silently vows never to get
involved with polities, if this is what it makes of people (88).
Both woman and son gaze at the “naxed” roar who like the
metaphoric oppressed monkey is taunted and repressed by politieat
machinations. Ti;e image is as reductive as it is scathing.
11w parspicaeious gaze of woman roands off Okafor’s collection.
In the last story “Anecdotes to her Rites of Passage. to
America”, woman
strand of pain” is etched boldly on Mrs. Yinka Ogondele’s
face in
123
glares, gleans and gazes. Given the privilege of the gaze, Chioma,
author’s alter ego flies and flees from the destitution of her
country. B the path is strait and in fact crooked. The crooked line to
the “Va] Stamp” desk at the airport is redolent of the
hilly and crooked path to village stream which is a source of
replenishment. Like the soothi village stream, the “Valid
Stamp” desk constitutes a seeming gateway a salvaging escape from
grime and destitution. Chioma’s disrupted li of thought recalls
the line of acolytes seeking “Earth’s Clay”2 on A
Wednesday. This evokes the imagery of the earth in Okafor’s Fr
Earth ‘s Bedcharnber. The grim metaphors of ash, crooked, poor,
bloat and war generate pain in Chioma’s stripping gaze. Beneath
the veneer the American dream is the stark reality of universal
poverty, drugs ai violence which whip the poor and the oppressed.
Imagery as bleak as these inundate Zaynab Alkali’s C’obwebs
a) Other Stories. The pessirnisitic tone in the titles of the six short
stories palpable — dust, ash, nightmare, cobwebs, vagabond,
footloose. Set in t] arid environment of the Muslim North where female
education is hard encouraged, the collection depicts destitution,
idleness, sexism and soci inequity. Feminization of poverty is glaring
in this work where m rather than women have the whip hand. This is
visibly portrayed in “TI House of Dust”. The pater familias
Abdu-Zak, after ten years marriage, rclegates his wife Maaya and two
sons to the village and lat migrates to metropolitan Lagos where he
secretly starts another famil This fact is revealed only after his
death.
The stripping of men in death or niirasse is a political stratel
adopted by female writers in the Muslim culture. In
Ramatoulaye’s/Ba own words in So Long a Letter:
The mirasse commanded by the Koran requires that a dead person be
stripped of his most intimate secrets; thus is exposed to others what
was carefully concealed. These
— exposures crudely explain a man’s life. With
consternation I measure the extent of Modou’s betrayal (9).
Mirasse thus exposes a person’s sins, which are showcased in
retrospec One critic views mirasse as a redefinition tool used both as
a structur and cultural framework to assess marital relationship.
(Obinna
124
ansactional Analysis”; 191).
Alkali employs the mirasse strategy in “The House of Dust”
to
zrike a chord of pity for the whipped elderly Maaya. In aflashback we
re intimated that her husband of thirty-five years Abdu-Zak, in the vein
Ramatoulaye’s husband, Modou had betrayed her. The mirasse was
ecipitated by the visit of a young woman to the village who turned out
be Abdu-Zak’s daughter from his secret marriage which lasted
twenty
_ e years. Maaya is evidently irked at the fact that Abdu-Zak’s
second
fe, a medical doctor, has well educated sons and daughters while she,
i the contrary, is saddled with reckless sons who brazenly sprinkle
:ebilitating dust in their grim house of dust. Overwhelmed by the
reality
- f her husband’s treachery, the forlorn Maaya wallows in
self-pity and :epression:
She had sown, but she was not reaping what she had sown. Instead of
inheriting some form of security and rest from a life-long of service,
it looked now as if she had inherited a house full of liabilities she
was not capable of handling, especially financially (77).
Clearly, Alkali has cast the piteous Maaya as a foil to the financially
independent, well-educated second wife who has towered above
Maaya’s state of idleness and insecurity. The grossly pragmatic
Abdu-Zak, who seemed to find fulfilment in his second home, had only
exploited and expropriated Maaya’s unpaid work which consists
chiefly in taking care of Abdu-Zak’s large household in the
village. Chafing under the bruises of the double life led by her wily
husband, Maaya practically became a nervous wreck. Her room like
Yinka’s room in “Over his Own Dead Body” became a
“virtual physical prison”. We are told that her mind was a
more deadly confining prison. There can be no doubt that
Abdu-Zak’s whiplash swished and tortured a battered female psyche.
It is noteworthy that.Maaya’s fall on the staircase resulting in
an
injured ankle in the course of Abdu-Zak’s fatal stroke,
precipitates her
eventual precipitous fail from grace. 1-Icr husband’s sudden
death results
a sudden change of fortune. She swiftly moves from the flickering
position of a comfortable middle-class home manager to that of a
125
desbtute widow grappling with dimhkshing reserves. This teality
nhvsicallv enabi:shed hcr nj,:red ankle. Like Nana in ALaiIs Ti’,
- - - - .
a 11 i?a ‘‘UlCaJOdlO ‘C Lift,’
a cc c ajnoaates ne 1 a _c
c e a cr’
£ - .
tH ub.rcst, b: ‘ccc ±s rIaSaI:hcq S O)N
n: “ -T;. ‘. a :.c ‘::::ccL
• ,.: - - •-- . :
- . ..
- . . . . . . . .
-. •-- .: ... . .
inrar,cc: ca . earca - -
valid Li nexus me’. (ha: my emphas:s.
The other wh’p to Hildis 1ife is her aiting daugher. Bbi, A
victim oi
cbii-marriage. she u1timatei suffers from \‘esico-Vaginai Fistuic
tV\ F) and also from a ‘strange cough”. The author
underlines a hippe(
mother agonizina over a sick club a-itt he repletion of the worn
“pain’
ton ards the end of the ste”:
The subiect of Bihi seemed to give her [Hildij much
pa”: liZ.
The pc/ned leak seciud’rdne; ,,aen once more” (102).
“Bibi is ill”, she said au/n/u/ic, “she is
dyxng.” (103; my
cniphasis
Motherhood in this case dues not give Jon but pain. Not only is Bib: ih
bat tile “ashes’ of hei oem: OO ivarriape are thrown unto
her mother’s
eves, Bibi, indeed, L nm mum ai 1erent from the ashes that are flicked
from ncr cheap cigarettes.
Much as 4jkali’c women are in the main whipped severally, the
126
authorial vision in her earlier works is optimistic in respect of
national reconstruction. Ogunyemi, in fact, sees her vision as utopian.
As she aptly observes:
Alkali’s utopian vision is of a country made up of androgynous
types, where the men are she-men and women he-men. Together, they
establish a womanist haven for the good of all. Her ideology is thus
strongly nationalistic - the rebuilding of a Nigeria by responsible men
and women. She appeals to the women not to wait idly but to work
together with the men, crippled though they may be, to accomplish the
vital duty of reconstruction (313).
The Stillborn undoubtedly ends with this vision. In spite of the
deafening whiplash of her husband, Habu Adams, Li assumes the lofty
role of a she-man and assists the crippled Habu in his tottering steps.
Both finally walk together in harmony at an equal pace.
This utopian vision may not be obvious in Cobwebs and Other Stories.
The author, nevertheless, in the vein of Okafor opens and closes her
collection with the female journey. She thus prepares the grounds for
gender complementarity on equal footing by arming her heroines with
formal education which supplies the whip hand. Mama, in the title story
is strategically sandwiched between two men on the bus in a symbolic
journey of personal and communal rehabilitation. Mama is set apart from
other women in her village due to her formal education. Voiceless women
like her own mother recall the silence of Li’s mother in The
Stillborn. In Margaret Kassam’s contention “Li’s
mother lives an almost non-existent life in her own house. Playing out
her vital role in the shadows” (124). The same could be said of
Mama’s voiceless, utterly repressed mother in a Muslim culture.
As I have stated elsewhere, female experience in Alkali’s works,
owes its peculiarity to the predominantly Muslim society. The low
status of Islamic women is evidenced by the repressive masculine
dominance. These women have little or no say in the family where the
father is the male authority figure nor in the sex-segregated community
where the female gender is viewed as a tabula rasa (“The
Foot” 160).
127
L
The sub-category status of women in a sex-segregated Muslim culture is
j palpable. Although Mama is geared to bear the teachers’ whips,
her
potential is circumscribed by her husband and her father who forbid her
to study law or medicine deemed culturally as masculine professions.
That was indeed a society where “women did not have to think. The
men always did the thinking for mankind (17). In the vein of Okafofs
persona in “Professor’s Return Journey” that composes
an elegy for the professor who grounded her in oral literature at
Nsukka Universiti. Mama pays a mental tribute to Mr. Busa, her American
Science teacher in Kufam Secondary School, who had shown a keen
interest in her cognitive capabilities.
Mama’s education at the university was the beginning of a ne way
of life which alienated her from her hearth in the Beta community.
Psychologically whipped by this reality and also battling with her
conscience over an extra-marital affair, she moved about restlessly in
search of an inner peace. It is salient to note that
“Cobwebs” is the onl\ story in the collection which could
fit into Littata Fan Soyayya (books o love). According to Novian
Whitsitt, the Soyayya of the Kano marke:
literature “indirectly and candidly question” the gender
status quo and works to modify the social, familial and educational
position of Hausa women. (119). Alkali’s female hero, Mama,
questions the position o women and in the process she alienates herself
not only from her own taciturn children, who find it extremely
difficult to relate to her but alse from her own muted mother who
appears to be utterly pained herself. She, nevertheless struggles with
the thread of cultural normative patterns. which she finds
anachronistic. She is convinced that she is no longer a relevant
component of the threadbare system with retrogressive value system.
Unlike the women of the Beta community who have been reduced to puppets
and who can be easily pacified with gifts from theLoverbearing men,
Mama is resolute and focused in her steps towards independence. The
fact that she sleeps in her father’s house rather than her
marital home is predicated on her whip hand. And with that hand she
weaves her basket for national reconstruction, which dcfinitel
presupposes an independent and informed mind.
Clearly Mama adumbrates the she-man (Madam) in “Footloose.
128
Madam (a title that connotes respect in the Nigerian culture)
represents, in this story, an independent career woman who is neither
bogged dowii by a stifling marriage nor by degenerating customs. Madam,
indeed, recalls Okafor’s female protagonist in “She is a
Man”. Madam is, however, whipped by the ubiquitous, footloose
vagabond who fleecec her at the airport. This is not a function of
female vulnerabilitLes tr e”an Oga Sir, the patriarchal figure,
is also duped at the Nigeian airp’i. ;‘bb has become
chaotic, rowdy and consequently a fertile s a
arid tuicksters. Madam’s streetwise driver, Mamman, spa
agony of a long wait at the tarmac by tactically placing he: the hcaa
of the queue. The symbolism of this singular act resides in female
indispensability to national issues. By propelling woman forward, the
author implies female ascendancy in the public realm. There is no doubt
that the financial independence of Alkali’s persona, Madam,
proffers her the privilege of the gaze. In the course of her flight,
the soaring madam like Chioma in Okafor’s “Anecdotes”
should be able to glare, glean and gaze. It would, however, appear that
the gaze this time would be primarily upon a troubled Nigeria in dire
need of some wholesome reconstruction.
Both Okafor and Alkali have in their collections shown that the
femalist quest cannot be divorced from national consciousness. They
have both targeted the ordinary man and woman in their commitment to
social transformation. Okafor has further tried to reach out and
demonstrate her commitment to the masses by occasionally using demotic
language the pidgin variety of Nigerian English. The use of the living
present in her stories makes her imagery come alive and sharp.
Okafor as well as Alkali has demonstrated that female anaiphabetism is
an incubus that should be warded off. The nightmare of the whiplash on
female sensitivity gets encrusted with the clog of poverty. It is
therefore by dint of,educational empowerment that women can appropriate
the whip hand and clean up their dusty and cobweb- ridden homes and
country. Both Okafor and Alkali have visibly remained temperate in
their political thrust. Seiyifa Koroye has described Alkali’s
brand of feminism as ascetic with hardly “any trace of excess of
selfinduIgence (47). Another critic is of the view that Okafor
“cannot be
129
considered an active feminist” (Comellini: 2001; 99). Such
exegeses establish the fact that both writers arc essentially femalists
weaving the basket of national regeneration with the view of
integrating female mental and sinewy capabilities.
While Alkali focuses mainly on the Muslim North and in consequence
treads cautiously, Okafor bestrides the globe and pours out a stream of
invectives against multilayered oppressions with the symbolic lanuage
that is geared towards “an authentic and ompelling
ctatcment”3. In the main, Okafor and Alkali have in their fictive
works doggedly stiiven to whip up support for the whipped masses
foregrounding women. It would seem that their unalloyed commitment
stems i om that of their literary mother and compatriot Buchi Ernecheta
whosc p eculiar style resides in vacillating between fact and fiction.
Notes
Frantz Fanon states that the alWrnative terminology
‘corticoviscetal’, which is an offshoot of Soviet research
findings, views the brain s the nerve-centre where the psychism is
highlighted. See Frantz Fanon
The tched of the Earth p. 234.
2. The ear h like the rat strikes a resonant chord in Okafor’s
works. In a conversation with the writer in July 2001 she stated that
she derives her insnration from Ani — the earth goddess. Just as
the earth is femini2 i so also is the rat feminized in Ogini ‘s
Choice. Ogini is a femaic zcbra rat of an epic stature.
3 In hei entry on Chinyere Okafor, Obioma Nnaemeka acknowledges the
author’s pidgin symbolism and local imagery. She goes further to
assert, “The new and courageous talent who is proficient in the
three genres of literature is fast developing an authentic and
compelling signature”. See Encyclopedia of World Literature in
the 20th Century, vol. 3, 3’ edition.
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