RECONFIGURATION OF WOMEN IN THE AFRICAN NOVEL

The oppression of women has been a salient feature of societies across the globe. Consequently, there has been a continuous effort to write liberation literature to emancipate women from the yoke of patriarchal thought. This paper examines the gender politics articulated by selected authors. The novels have been identified to survey the plight of women in three geographical locations; East, West and South Africa. The aim of this research is to reveal that these writers (re)place the selected female characters in an attempt to subvert the historical conditions of women in African societies. The study reads Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s political women in Matigari (1987), Petals of Blood (1977), A Grain of Wheat (1967), Tsitsi Dangarembga’s women conditions in Nervous Conditions (1988), Mariama Bâ’s resolute Muslim woman in So Long a Letter (1986), and Ousmane Sembène’s bits of women in God’s Bits of Wood (1962). This study concludes that these texts succeed in reconfiguring the woman through subversive strategies.