LOOKING at the era of the old school feminist writers, was it just their era or were they just writing about what they felt was important?

I don’t like tags so the term ‘feminist writers’ don’t really appeal to me, or let’s say, don’t really apply to me. I write on women’s issues. I push women’s issues, so I would put myself in the mould of ‘women writing about fellow women’ or women writers, to broadly put it.

At times, in this clime, the term ‘feminism’ comes with so much negative connotation especially from persons who are not well informed and sometimes, issues of substance get muddled up in a web of misinterpretation, misconception and sentiments, so most times, I leave out the tags, do or write what I have to write and move on.

Buchi Emechetta vehemently disapproved of being tagged a feminist yet she was one of the foremost African writers who really explored the issues that women go through and which interestingly, have remained burning issues that we still grapple with especially the trials and tribulations of women trying to find their feet, their bearings and their sanity in abusive marriages and relationships and of course, the power plays at work and various other spheres where women are still striving to be seen, to be heard and to excel.

Children of circumstances

Our pioneer writers were ‘children of circumstances’, women who found themselves writing at a point when African Literature was beginning to gain global attention and relevance, but typically, it was still very much imbued with patriarchy, meaning women’s voices were stifled in the early writings, just as in real life.

In the early works of Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi, for instance, women characters were usually relegated to playing roles such as those of hardworking house wives and pretty sex workers.

Women writers such as Buchi and Flora Nwapa therefore had to consciously redefine these roles, asserting the roles of women in society as much more than those minor characters, and portraying them in the robes of influencers, powerful women who call the shots and dictated circumstances, women who confidently claimed their spaces and refused to be repressed or suppressed.

And I think they really ran with that vision. They did very well. Many of us came into the consciousness of women having a can-do spirit merely by reading the literature of these women and we owe them that eternal load of gratitude.

So far, with the passing away of these writers, there has been no real replacement. How can we bridge the gap?

In my view, we have had replacements. The difference may be that the old women writers were pioneers and so their works generated a lot of publicity, seeing that they were delving into new areas of writing that really excited so many people and still excite.