Politics of feminist resistance in Nuruddin Farah's from a crooked rib and Lola Shoneyin's the secret lives of Baba Segi's wives

Abstract EN

African feminist voices of the mid twentieth century to the present have vigorously tackled the intricate issues of sexuality, wifehood, motherhood, reproduction, polygamy, female circumcision, male supremacy, women's solidarity, and women's economic independence.

With these issues in mind and guided by the principles of African Feminism, the present study aims at scrutinizing Nuruddin Farah's From a Crooked Rib (1970) and Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (2010) to investigate the politics of feminist resistance to patriarchal oppression in Somalia and Nigeria respectively.

Analyzing novels written in East and West Africa, in which Muslims comprise the majority of the population, the study sheds light on how African women resist oppression in the name of religion; African men, as the analysis of the two texts will reveal, often twist and manipulate the meanings of the sacred texts to justify the subjugation of women.