Gender in African Women's Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference by Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi

Author:Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi [Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-06-21T18:06:00+00:00

Female bonding develops out of this sensuous, maternal love, and paves the way for both women to shift in and out of their marginality, for their silences to be broken and their stories to be told. Non-heterosexual and womencentered existence is strongly reclaimed and reaffirmed in Beyala's work. But there is a difference in reclaiming these women-centered spaces that does not exclude a male frame of reference-a difference that I see in Beyala's work as compared, for example, with Monique Wittig's Les guerilleres. There is an active pursuit of sensuous relationships between women, but there is also a tolerance for women seeking pleasures with men, if only the women are not objectified in the process. These women-centered spaces are unlike those portrayed by the other women writers here considered. Though others do affirm women-to-women bonding, what is specific and important in Beyala's work is that it goes beyond mere "bonding" (i.e., the type of bonding within the women's network that pitches in to help other women when they are in need). Calixthe Beyala portrays a specific sensuousness and eroticization of that women-centered existence that can be likened to a modified version of what Adrienne Rich has described as a lesbian continuum. According to Rich, "lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence. I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range-through each woman's life and throughout history-of women-identified experience; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman" (156). I will here modify Rich's definition by inserting in this continuum Alice Walker's definition of a womanist as "a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually.... Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually" (xi). The continuum that I see in Beyala reflects both Rich's and Walker's suggestions. The women in Beyala's work do not necessarily reject heterosexuality, nor do they necessarily turn to lesbianism. Walker would say, for example, that these women appreciate women's culture and possess a valuable emotional flexibility. Some of them (especially the main characters, Tanga and Ateba L6ocadie) simply seem to find psychological, sensuous, and sometimes sexual fulfilment in other women.

The nineteen-year-old Ateba spends all her life writing letters to women, recreating a women's "world of stars," a mythological world in which women were free before men invited them and then subjugated them. Ateba's "mad ness" and revolt against patriarchy and the male subordination of women is mediated through this writing, in the same way that Tanga uses storytelling. Women therefore seem to be the best friends, listeners, and confidantes of other women. Women bring out the best in other women, listen to them, kindle their loves not only for living but for enjoying life. They mold each others' desiresdesires that, according to Ateba, should be directed toward other women, but that in some instances could also be directed toward men. As Ateba herself puts it: "Quelquefois, je t'ai reproche ton desire de l'homme" (CSB 67) [Sometimes I have begrudged you your desire for men].

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