Books in the Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora series

In this book, Oyewumi extends her path-breaking thesis that in Yoruba society, construction of gender is a colonial development since the culture exhibited no gender divisions in its original form.

This book makes the case for an urgent praxis of critical spatial literacy for African women. It provides a critical analysis of how Asante women negotiate and understand the politics of contemporary space in Accra and beyond and the effect it has on their lives, demonstrating how they critically 'read that world.'

This collection chronicles the strategic uses of madness in works by black women fiction writers from Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and the United States. Moving from an over-reliance on the ¿madwoman¿ as a romanticized figure constructed in opposition to the status quo, contributors to this volume examine how black women authors use madness, trauma, mental illness, and psychopathology as a refraction of cultural contradictions, psychosocial fissures, and political tensions of the larger social systems in which their diverse literary works are set through a cultural studies approach. The volume is constructed in three sections: Revisiting the Archive, Reinscribing Its Texts: Slavery and Madness as Historical Contestation, The Contradictions of Witnessing in Conflict Zones: Trauma and Testimony, and Novel Form, Mythic Space: Syncretic Rituals as Healing Balm. The novels under review re-envision the initial trauma of slavery and imperialism, both acknowledging the impact of these events on diasporic populations and expanding the discourse beyond that framework. Through madness and healing as sites of psychic return, these novels become contemporary parables of cultural resistance.

Informal folk narrative genres such as gossip, advice, rumor, and urban legends provide a unique lens through which to discern popular formations of gender conflict and AIDS beliefs.

Focusing on aesthetic figuration diverse home spaces, modes of domestic life, and family histories, this book argues that depicting democracy as it unfolds literally at home presents a compelling portrait of the intimate and everyday aspects of change that can be overlooked by a focus on structural concerns in South Africa.

This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth-ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria.

This collection chronicles the strategic uses of madness in works by black women fiction writers from Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and the United States. Moving from an over-reliance on the "madwoman" as a romanticized figure constructed in opposition to the status quo, contributors to this volume examine how black women authors use madness, trauma, mental illness, and psychopathology as a refraction of cultural contradictions, psychosocial fissures, and political tensions of the larger social systems in which their diverse literary works are set through a cultural studies approach. The volume is constructed in three sections: Revisiting the Archive, Reinscribing Its Texts: Slavery and Madness as Historical Contestation, The Contradictions of Witnessing in Conflict Zones: Trauma and Testimony, and Novel Form, Mythic Space: Syncretic Rituals as Healing Balm. The novels under review re-envision the initial trauma of slavery and imperialism, both acknowledging the impact of these events on diasporic populations and expanding the discourse beyond that framework. Through madness and healing as sites of psychic return, these novels become contemporary parables of cultural resistance.

This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth-ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria.