Omar Sougou. Writing Across Cultures: Gender Politics and Difference in the Fiction of Buchi Emecheta. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002. 243 pp. $37.50 (paper), ISBN 978-90-420-1298-1; $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-420-1308-7.
Reviewed by Ronit Fainman-Frenkel (The Program in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies, University of Arizona)
Published on H-Africa (October, 2002)
The Politics of Theory
The Politics of Theory
Omar Sougou's Writing Across Cultures: Gender Politics and Difference in the Fiction of Buchi Emecheta, is an interesting but problematic investigation of Buchi Emecheta's fiction. Sougou delivers a sustained analysis of this iconoclastic writer's work but his theoretical paradigm is not always helpful in illuminating the meaning/s of Emecheta's works.
While many articles and critical collections on Emecheta have materialized in recent years, few monographic studies have emerged that have solely focused on her work. Writing Across Cultures is therefore an important text in highlighting Emecheta's growing importance within African literature. Sougou focuses on ten novels: In the Ditch (1972), Second-class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Destination Biafra (1982), Naira Power (1982), Double Yoke (1982), The Rape of Shavi (1983) and Gwendolen (1989). His selection covers a "fair representation" of Emecheta's texts and ranges from her semi-autobiographies, through popular fiction and onto her more famous novels. This is the strength of Sougou's study--his discussion of different types of fiction including Emecheta's much neglected popular novels.
The textual analysis begins with a chapter on autobiography that curiously does not center Emecheta's two semi-autobiographical novels within the trajectory of African women's writing, but rather within very generalized theoretical terms. This results in a decontextualized discussion of the novels that merely revolves around storylines, the biographical elements within the texts and literary interpretation outside of a relevant discursive structure. Sougou's discussion of Emecheta's most famous work, Joys of Motherhood, is much stronger. His extensive discussion references the influential works on the text within a nuanced analysis that delineates the politics around the novel, from the vicissitudes of the publishing industry to Emecheta's utilization of stereotypes. Sougou's chapter on African popular novels is the cornerstone of his study. He discusses Naira Power and Double Yoke within a cogent framework that incorporates the issues surrounding popular literature within African literary discourse. A cultural studies analysis ensues that breaks down the boundaries between "high" and popular fiction in his integration of a Bakhtinian emphasis with Nigerian contextual study.
Sougou develops a theoretically diverse base for his analysis. He utilizes Marxist and Lacanian literary theory, postcolonial and feminist theory as well as connecting his analysis to a range of debates in African literature such as the language debate, the question of genres in African women's literature, and questions of audience. While his theoretical knowledge is demonstrably vast and impressive, it results in a dense introductory paragraph that places this text beyond the reach of a general or undergraduate audience (although a graduate or theoretically sophisticated audience might find it interesting). Bakhtin's idea of "double-voiced discourse" emerges as a central theme from within the theoretical morass of this first section of the text. Yet it is the very usage of this concept that heralds the problems within this text. Sougou states:
"This duality is also resident in the feminist consciousness that pervades her work, and which is in dialogue with an African outlook. In the course of my investigation, a double-voiced discourse emerges as an expression of this dual consciousness" (p. 8).
The binary logic of placing "African" and "feminist" on opposite poles echoes through the text. While the relationship between African women and feminism is a complex one, it can certainly be understood within the debates of African women writers and theorists with whom Sougou seems to have only a superficial familiarity. For example, he centralizes Showalter's idea of women's culture (pp. 8-12) where class, race, nationality, and history are as significant as gender. The irony in this approach is that most African women writers have theorized gender in a similar vein, but have contextualized their theory to particularly African circumstances. For example, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, one of Africa's leading feminist thinkers (to whom he inexplicably refers as Omolara L. Ogundipe), has situated much of her analysis within the same Nigerian context that Emecheta emerges from. While Sougou does incorporate work by African feminist/womanist/stiwanist scholars, his lack of familiarity with the huge body of critical work by African women in the field is apparent in their omission from the theoretical base that he employs, resulting in his idea that being both African and feminist constitutes different discourses. Sougou instead centralizes western feminist theory without contextualizing its usage for his application. This is further compounded by his unproblematized application of Lacanian theory in analyzing Emecheta's texts--a theoretical paradigm that has been widely criticized as being particularly specific to Western cultures.
The book clearly has a broad range of theoretical knowledge, but not an in-depth base in particular traditions. The many different theoretical strands Sougou employs therefore do not really work together but rather highlight the different bits of his theoretical canon. There are just too many assorted pieces that have been introduced on too superficial a level, resulting in a fragmented theoretical frame rather than the eclectic theoretical tapestry that he was aiming for.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-africa.
Citation:
Ronit Fainman-Frenkel. Review of Sougou, Omar, Writing Across Cultures: Gender Politics and Difference in the Fiction of Buchi Emecheta.
H-Africa, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2002.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6812
Copyright © 2002 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.