3 research outputs found
‘AFRICA HAS ERRED IN ITS MEMORY’: EXPLORING CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES IN TEXTS BY PETINA GAPPAH AND YVONNE VERA
In the short story collection Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals (1992) the
Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera initiates her construction of alternative
historical narratives, particularly ones that are able to voice women’s experiences.
Her project of fostering an alternative engagement with Zimbabwean history
locates her in a group of writers that have moved away from simple adherence
to historical narratives. The importance of addressing the elision of women from
history becomes all the more apparent when one considers that the silencing of
their voices and the construction of identity has been twofold: identity was shaped
by both the imperial discourse of the coloniser and by the patriarchal discourse
of men. While women have certainly negotiated these pressures in myriad ways,
imperial and patriarchal discourses have established the frameworks within which
they were able to construct their identities. The need to create texts that will
mirror the experiences of the female subject from their own perspectives is thus
an important feminist and post-colonial project. While academic discussions of
Vera’s texts have often compared and contrasted her work with male Zimbabwean
authors, no work has focussed on analysing her together with one of the most
prominent female authors to have emerged from Zimbabwe since Vera herself.
This article focuses on Vera’s work and Petina Gappah’s short story collection
An Elegy for Easterly (2009) to explore the concerns that these two Zimbabwean authors address in their fiction