Women's Rites and (W)Human Rights: Female Genital Excision in African Women's Writing

A comparison of four works dealing with female genital excision, two novels dating back to the 1960s (Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966) and Charity Waciuma's Daughter of Mumbi (1969) and a novel and short-story that appeared in the previous decade, (Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi's "Against the Pleasure Principle" (1990) and Evelyne Accad L'Excisée (1982), makes it possible to distinguish two contrastive literary representations of female genital excision, both related to a specific historical time-frame. Whereas the earlier authors, writing shortly after independence, are careful to consider the traditional significance of the practice and its function in the colonial conflict, the more recently-published writers highlight its instrumental role in the oppression of women. Moreover, they emphasise African women's active participation in the elimination of excision and, by doing so, make a significant contribution to the current international debate on female genital excision, in which the voices of African women tend to get ignored by both Western feminists and African men.