Buchi Emecheta
I've been invited to contribute an article to a special issue of the journal Paradoxa titled "African Science Fiction," edited by Dr Mark Bould. Having taught Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi (1984) for my 3rd year Science Fiction module recently (more module info here), I'm keen to consider in more detail the way in which the novel opens up so many questions concerning the problems of boundaries (men/women, West/Other, "primitive" culture/technologised modernity, utopian dream/material reality etc.) and refuses any easy final position. It's also a novel that remains extremely relevant, for instance in terms of its raising of questions of universalising liberal humanist assumptions concerning women's rights and its simultaneous critique of cultural relativism (particularly concerning female genital mutilation – which Emecheta addresses in other texts also).
I'd like to contextualise the novel with relation to Emecheta's other "realist" literary works and life writing (such as her 1972 autobiographical novel In the Ditch). Finally, I'd like to consider whether this text can help us rethink how we read West African feminist writing and utopian and science fiction.
For more information on Buchi Emecheta, see the British Council contemporary writers site.
Image used with permission of Ekko von Schwichow, photographer.
Dr Caroline Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research and teaching specialisms are in 21st century literature and critical theory, science fiction and post-apocalyptic narratives, Marxist aesthetics, and utopianism.
Follow / Contact