African women and African oral literatures

Abstract

Literature, oral and written, has the potential to reshape gender relations in Africa. However, dialectics, ambiguities, and paradoxes characterize the perceptions and roles of women in African oral literature making it imperative to review their diverse and multifaceted depiction. Similarly, there is the need to explicate the contributions of African women to the creation and continuity of African oral literature in traditional and contemporary periods. This chapter, therefore, attempts to situate women's roles and delineate gender dynamics in African oral literature. It explicates the distinctive features of African oral literature and examines its practices and performances across different communities in Africa with specific focus on women. The essay further explores the politics of gender inclusion and exclusion in African oral literature. It concludes that although women are a contested category, they constantly redefine their significations within cultural and social spaces across different historical periods, thereby (re) creating and reflecting more equitable gendered values. Women and men can more proactively reconstruct oral literature to make it more protean and compatible with gender equity principles in its adaptations in contemporary forms.