Contemporary Literary Criticism | Aidoo, Ama Ata - Modupe Olaogun (essay date summer 2002)

Modupe Olaogun (essay date summer 2002)

SOURCE: Olaogun, Modupe. “Slavery and Etiological Discourse in the Writing of Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, and Buchi Emecheta.” Research in African Literatures 33, no. 2 (summer 2002): 172-93.

[In the following essay, Olaogun explores the recurring theme of slavery in Anowa, Bessie Head's Maru, and Buchi Emecheta's The Slave Girl, asserting that the slavery motif “suggests a deeper structural analysis of historical time than a focus on the immediate independence period as a privileged moment through which the postindependence morass in Africa could be understood.”]

Slavery—human bondage for labor exploitation in domestic or market contexts—is a theme that has been explored by the Ghanaian Ama Ata Aidoo, the Nigerian Buchi Emecheta, and the South African-born, Botswana-naturalized Bessie Head—all women writers whose writing is contemporaneous. In addition to their...

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