Towards a New Feminist Practice in Africa: The Women Writing Africa Project

Abstract

This article looks at the Women Writing Africa project as both a response to prevailing assumptions about the African woman as abject and helpless, and as a positive
reinforcement of women's agency in an African context. I read the two texts that represent
the project thus far (Women Writing Africa: the Southern Region and Women Writing
Africa West Africa and the Sahel) as indicative of a new African feminism, one that
foregrounds women's writing, in all its forms, as a means whereby to re-envision African
women, to invoke women's writing as evidence of women's strength and diversity, and
to re-imagine the African continent as a place in which women have been active participants
in its history and culture.

Current Writing Vol. 19 (1) 2007: pp. 116-136