In the past five decades and over three generations, African women writers have introduced a new autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision that brings nuance to the Female Genital Mutilation debate. Spanning pharaonic times through classical antiquity to the onset of the twenty-first century, this unprecedented study shows how this experiential body of literature--encompassing English, Arabic, and French--goes far beyond such traditional topics as universalism and cultural relativism, by locating the female body as a site of liminality between European and African...

Uniting a sense of the political dimensions of language appropriation with a serious, yet accessible linguistic terminology, The African Palimpsest examines the strategies of 'indigenization' whereby West African writers have made their literary English or French distinctively 'African'. Through the apt metaphor of the palimpsest - a surface that has been written on, written over, partially erased and written over again - the book examines such well-known West African writers as Achebe, Armah, Ekwensi, Kourouma, Okara, Saro-Wiwa, Soyinka and Tutuola as well as lesser-known writers from...

Often labelled 'rituals' or 'customs', male circumcision and female excision are also irreversible amputations of human genitalia, with disastrous and at times life-long consequences for both males and females. However, scholars and activists alike have been diffident about making a case for symmetry between these two practices. Fearful Symmetries investigates the sociological, medical, legal, and religious justifications for male circumcision and female excision while it points to various symmetries and asymmetries in their discursive representation in cultural anthropology, law, medicine,...

This collection by trans and non-trans academics and artists from the United States, the UK, and continental Europe, examines how transgenderism can be conceptualized in a literary, biographical, and autobiographical framework, with emphasis on place, ethnicity and visibility. The volume covers the 1950s to the present day and examines autobiographical accounts and films featuring gender transition. Chapters focus on various stages of transitioning. Interviews with trans people are also provided.