AFRICAN FEMINISM AND EXISTENTIAL APPROACH: THE WORKS OF BUCHI EMECHETA

Abstract

One of the justifiable reasons for paying particular attention to the writings of Buchi Emecheta and other African female writers like her is their ability to balance the male stereotyping of African women in fiction with the women's perspective. From all indications, there are more Africans male writers than women and any attention paid to the female writers tend to assist in rescuing female writing from near oblivion and to get it more firmly into the canon of Africa's creative tradition. African women arc seen by men and even themselves not as fellow human beings with voice and choice but as commodities owned by the male world either as brides to yield money for the family in form of bride wealth money or as child bearing commodities for the male world or as means of satisfying male sexual urge. Buchi Emecheta's primary concern as a feminist writer according to Ogudipe - Leslie (1983:11) is ... to tell about being a woman and to tell reality from a woman's view, a woman's perspective".

Through real and imagined experiences, Emecheta explores the various areas of the woman's psyche, which were either inaccessible or ignored by male writers. The result is a unique celebration of the black woman's extraordinary difficult life in a traditional and a changing society. Her protagonists include the deprived, discontented and social misfits, the "second class" citizens, the slaves, the pathetic mothers who give all to their families but reap no rewards, and the dynamic survivors in a society that brutalizes them. Through these images of women which she creates, Buchi Emecheta denounces fiercely sexual inequalities in African society. This paper is explored from existential point of view.