Literature and gender in the 21<sup>st</sup> century: A womanist reading of Mariama Ba’s <i>So Long a Letter</i> and Razinat Talatu Mohammed’s <i>The Travails of a First Wife</i>

The call for an Afrocentric feminist theory that will consider both gender and cultural issues, as it relates to the African woman came to be the impetus that led to the evolution of Womanism. Thus, this paper explores gender issues in the 21st century Nigerian literature. Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter and Razinat T Mohammed’s The Travails of a First Wife are read using the African feminist theory of Womanism to assess the different experiences of the female characters in both books. This includes their encounters in marriage and the level of abandonment suffered by the female characters will also be considered. The accommodating posture of womanism to marriage encourages women not to turn their backs on marriage, the home, and motherhood as the Western and radical feminists do. Consequently, in a bid not to negate men, the women struggle to maintain their marriages at the expense of the anticipated liberation they seek. Hence, womanism needs to resolve these conflicts that come with marriage, especially concerning polygamy and childlessness. The paper concludes by exposing intra-gender conflict and polygamy as major problems militating against womanism and the African feminist struggle at large.