Renegotiating the Terms of African Womanism: Binwell Sinyangwe’s A Cowrie of Hope and Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu

Abstract

Over the years African women have struggled for space and recognition in all spheres of human life. Writers from Efua Theodora Sutherland, Buchi Emecheta and Ama Ata Aidoo down to Chimamanda N. Adichie, Lola Shoneyin and Ayobami Adebayo have expressed African women’s struggles from divergent viewpoints. As such, this paper returns to the concept of African womanism as created by Clenora Hudson-Weems and endeavours to dissect how Binwell Sinyangwe’s A Cowrie of Hope and Neshani Andreas The Purple Violet of Oshaantu engages this concept in order to create awareness of the African woman’s disposition. Subsequently, this paper focuses on the new approaches to the discussion of the African woman’s liberation. It takes a look at the face of African womanism as a movement that advocates the liberation of the African woman within her cultural niche. It also discusses how Sinyangwe and Andreas address the negative factors oppressing the African woman and also suggest ways of liberation by renegotiation.

Keywords: African womanism, womanist, African women, blackness, feminism, ways of liberation

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/71-05

Publication date:August 31^st 2020