How can Africans escape the control of the complex power relationships established during Colonization and successfully achieve self-development? More importantly, and the primary concern of this book, can African female characters ever hope to arrive at such individuation given the dual challenges of the power structures defined and enforced by European colonizers and the patriarchal structures that contort issues related to gender? Tracing Personal Expansion reads late 20th Century works by African female novelists Buchi Emecheta, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Calixthe Beyala as modern...

Sefi Atta is one of the latest in a great line of female Nigerian writers. her works have garnered several literary awards; these include the Red Hen Press Short Story Award, the PEN International David TK Wong Prize, the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Atta's oeuvre has received the praise and respect of several noted African writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helon Habila. Atta's insights into the roles and treatment of women, neocolonial government structures, patriarchy, 21st-century phenomena such as...