Post-Colonial and African American Women's Writings: A Critical Introduction

This accessible and unusually wide-ranging book is essential reading for anyone interested in post-colonial and African American women's writing. It provides a valuable gender and culture inflected, critical introduction to well established women writers: Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Suniti Namjoshi, Bessie Head, and others from the US, India, Africa, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and introduces emergent women writers from South East Asia, Cyprus, and Oceania. Engaging with and clarifying contested critical areas of feminism and the post-colonial; exploring historical background and cultural context: discussing economic, political, and psychoanalytic influences on gender and experience, it provides a cohesive discussion of key issues such as cultural and gendered identity, motherhood, mothertongue, language, relationships, women's economic constraints, and sexual politics.