Abstract
Stephanie Urdang’s book, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau,1 remains one of the early attempts at a sustained study of the gender implications of liberation struggles in Africa. After listening to Amilcar Cabral—founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC)—speak on the liberation struggle in his country (Guinea-Bissau), particularly the fundamental role women played in it, Urdang drove home with a group of friends who were both excited and skeptical about what they had heard: “‘But we must admit he is a good politician,’ one voice declared. ‘He said just what we wanted to hear about women!”’2 The group’s skepticism about Cabral’s assertion that “women and men are equal partners in our struggle” is understandable in light of the pervasive failure of nationalist struggles to simultaneously articulate national liberation and gender equity. When Urdang visited the liberated zones of Guinea-Bissau in 1974, she was intrigued by the concept of “fighting two colonialisms” as expressed by Carmen Pereira (one of the leaders of PAIGC) and echoed by many other women.
“I am from the war front,” he began . . . .They wondered which war front he meant There were so many war fronts.
Flora Nwapa, Never Again
I told him that utter desperation led me to his house. I told him that he could see how I was fighting my own war on all fronts.... Under that painful state, I saw myself carrying my cross on all fronts, physically and mentally.
Rose Adaure Njoku, Withstand the Storm
In Guinea-Bissau we say that women have to fight against two colonialisms. One of the Portuguese, the other of men.
Carmen Pereira in Stephanie Urdang, A Revolution within a Revolution
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Notes
Stephanie Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).
Stephanie Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979) p. 7.
Flora Nwapa, Never Again (Enugu: Nwamife Publishers, 1975).
Flora Nwapa, Wives at War and Other Stories (Enugu: Tana Press, 1980).
Buchi Emecheta, Destination Biafra (London: Heinemann, 1982).
Rose Adaure Njoku, Withstand the Storm: War Memoirs of a Housewife (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1986).
Phanuel Egejuru, The Seed Yams Have Been Eaten (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1993).
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), p. x.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), p. xiii.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), p. 9.
C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature (London: MacMillan, 1992), p. 309.
Ernest Emenyonu, “The Nigerian Civil War and the Nigerian Novel: The Writer as Historical Witness,” in Ernest Emenyonu ed., Studies on the Nigerian Novel (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1991), p. 104.
Mahmoud Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and Late Colonialism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 61.
Alexander A. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War (Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1980), p. 3
See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1984).
Isaiah’s wife, Ubaaji (yam profit) is an exception but her name does not accord prestige to the woman but to the man who made the profit (Isaiah)—”probably it means that he married her with profits he made from selling yams” (p. 199).
V. Coulon, “Women at War: Nigerian Women Writers and the Civil War,” Commonwealth vol. 13, no. 1 (1990), p. 3.
Njoku, Withstand the Storm, p. 151.
Ben Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra (Enugu: Benlie (Nigeria) Publishers, 1989), pp. 312–313.
Chinua Achebe, Girls at War and Other Stories, (London: Heinemann, 1972).
Ike Chukwuemeka, Sunset at Dawn (London: Collins and Harville, 1976).
Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution, pp. xi–xiii.
Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Judith Roof and Robyn Weigman ed., Who Can Speak (Urbna: University of Illinois Press, 1995).
See R. Radhakrishnan, “Nationalism, Gender and the Narrattive of Identity,” in Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 77–95
Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms, and Stephanie Urdang, A Revolution Within a Revolution: Women in Guinea-Bissau (Sommerville, MA: New England Free Press, 1986).
Emenyonu, “The Nigerian Civil War and the Nigerian Novel.”
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Nnaemeka, O. (1998). Fighting on all Fronts: Gendered Spaces, Ethnic Boundaries, and the Nigerian Civil War. In: Diamond, M.J. (eds) Women and Revolution: Global Expressions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_10
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