Motherlands: Black Women's Writing from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia

"This ground-breaking book will be especially valuable to women's studies, black and third world studies, and world literature scholars and students."ÐÐKarla Holloway, North Carolina State University

Motherlands is the first critical work to compare and contrast women's writing in English from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. Although critical attention has recently focused on and applauded the work of such Afro-American writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Gloria Naylor, and others, and although we are just beginning to look at the writings of Caribbean women, there are many excellent women writers in other parts of the world whose voices are just beginning to be heard. Their writings are important to developing theory on writings by women of color. That theory, in turn, has opened a dialogue with and a critique of feminist theories about women's writing, which frequently universalize in a manner that excludes women of color. This book is a major contribution to that debate.
The contributors to this volume reexamine the mythology of "motherhood" already well explored in feminist literary debate, applying these ideas for the first time to a burgeoning post-colonial literature. The writers discussed include Bessie Head, Jean Rhys, Ama Ata Aidoo, Joan Riley, Olive Senior, Nayantara Sahgal and Nawal el Sa'adawi. Each is considered both within her own "mother-culture" and alongside her literary sisters worldwide.
The contributors are Ranjana Ash, Elleke Boehmer, Jane Bryce, Abena Busia, Shirley Chew, Carolyn Cooper, Margaret M. Dunn, Elaine Savory Fido, Lyn Innes, Helen Kanitkar, Valery Kibera, Ann R. Morris, Judy Newman, Laura Niesen de Abruna, Velma Pollard, Caroline Rooney, and Isabel Carrera Suarez.