Mariama Ba, Rigoberta Menchu, and Postcolonial Feminism

This book investigates the convergence of feminist literary projects in the Latin American and West African contexts and demonstrates how the authors examined here employ similar writing strategies to (re)constitute feminine subjects. Their writing strives to rid literature, and thus international psyches, of reductive stereotypes of subaltern women, while projecting more complex, active female images. In portraying the horrific victimization that they and their people have experienced, these writers claim a position of authorial power and wield their tragedies, along with their words, as a weapon against imperial, patriarchal, and neocolonial tyranny. Despite their vast socioeconomic and cultural differences, these women share much common ground, where they cultivate feminine words of deliverance.