Uwakweh, P: African Women Under Fire

African writers and literary critics must account for the changing political terrain and how these contribute to creating new sources of conflicts and aggression toward women. This book brings insight and scholarly breadth to the growing research on women, war, and conflict in Africa. The aftermath of wars and conflicts initiates new forms of violence and related gender challenges. The contributors establish compelling evidence for the significance of gender in the analyses of contemporary warfare and conflict. Articulating war's consequences for women and children remains a major challenge for critics, policy makers, and human rights organizations. There is a need for deeper understanding of the new sources of violence and male aggression on women, the gendered challenges of reintegration in the aftermath, and the future consequences of gendered violence for the African continent. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers, instructors, students of literature in the humanities, women's studies, liberal studies, African studies, etc. at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It also offers interdisciplinary utility for readers interested in literary representations of women's experience in war and conflict.

ForewordAcknowledgmentsPart I: Female, Victim, Agent: African Women in War and ConflictIntroduction: Exploring African Women and the War Experience-A Critical Update, by Pauline Ada UwakwehChapter 1: At the Center, Taking Charge: Disruptive Discourse and Female Agency in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, by Jessie SagawaChapter 2: An Attempt at Inclusion: Reading the War Theme in Black Zimbabwean Women Texts, by Tendai MangenaChapter 3: The Female Body as Locus for National Trauma in the Fiction of Yvonne Vera, by Melissa R. RootChapter 4: Fanta Nacro's Night of Truth: the Journey to the End of the Night, by P. Julie PapaioannouChapter 5: Resilient Strategies and Reconstruction in Leonora Miano's Literary Writing, by Paul N. TouréPart II: Trauma, Reintegration, Healing: Transcending the Aftermath of Wars and ConflictsChapter 6: Memoir versus Fiction: Narrating Trauma in Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children and Thirty Girls, by Pauline Ada UwakwehChapter 7: "I Just Wanted To Forget It All. But It Was Impossible:" Umutesi and the Politics of Testimony in Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire, by Emilie DioufChapter 8: Victims' Narratives versus Perpetrators Testimonies: Understanding Violence against Women in Armed Conflicts in Africa, by Moussa IssifouChapter 9: Testimony as Text: "Performative Vulnerability" and the Limits of Legalistic Approaches to Refugee Protection, by Nanjala NyabolaAbout the Contributors