Molara Ogundipe
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Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie is a Nigerian feminist/Afro-Marxist writer who is considered one of the foremost writers on African feminism and Afro-marxism. She is a social critic who over the years is recognized as a viable authority on African women among black feminists and feminists in general.[1] She rose to prominence early in her career in the midst of a male dominated artistic field concerned about the problems afflicting the African man and with little written interest on a strong female perspective. Over the years, she has been a critic of what she termed "women oppression" and sometimes favor the view point of both the oppression of the wife by the husband, and the oppression by the husband's family. She criticizes this outcome as the result of a neo-colonial and fealty structure that society embraces that puts the African male at the height of societal stratification and the women to become variables of indifference.
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[edit] Criticism
Ogundipe earlier in her career had posited that a true feminist writer had to understand or describe effectively a woman's viewpoint and how to tell the story about a woman. Both standards, though borrowed from the international feminist handbook seems inherently to exclude many male writers as individuals capable of writing a feminist role or character. However, she strongly believes that rediscovering the role of women in Nigeria's social and political institutions may be the best way to improve those institutions. She is known as a writer who can present her view points in a way capturing the complexities of African life. In Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations, she wrote brilliantly about the dilemma of writing in her traditional language and the inconspicuous objections among men to practical equality between men and women.[1]
[edit] Works
- Carole Boyce-Davies, Carole B. Davies, and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie: Moving Beyond Boundaries. April 1995.
- Molara Ogundipe-Leslie: Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations. Feb 1994
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Gay Wilentz: Review Postcolonial / Postmodern: What's in a Wor(l)d? College English. Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1994)
- Gibreel M. Kamara: The Feminist Struggle in the Senegalese Novel: Mariama Ba and Sembene Ousmane. Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 32, No. 2 Nov., 2001.
- Allan, Tuzyline Jita: Book reviews, Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie. Research in African Literatures Summer 1995
