Generations of Women's Writing: Nigerian Literature On the Move.

The purpose of this thesis is to trace a path through Nigerian women's writing from the 1960s to the 2010s, analysing four works written by Nigerian women writers, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966), Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird (2014), and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, The Serial Killer (2018). The focus of the thesis will regard the representation of women and their role in society within different historical periods. Starting from a social and cultural viewpoint on the roles and status of West African women in precolonial times, the thesis will then give attention to the impact of colonialism on those roles and status and, especially, on the formation of postcolonial literatures. Postcolonial literatures as a result of Western education and Christianization are the means through which African writers dealt with the experience of colonialism and its effects. Through writing, African male and female authors have expressed different representations of men, women, and of society. Giving a particular attention to Nigerian female writing, the analysis of Nwapa’s Efuru (1966) and Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) will provide a closer look at how these two female authors made their voices heard on important issues, such as the subversion of patriarchal representations of women, and opened the lead to many other female writers. The thesis will finally take a step forward and explore the evolution of Nigerian writing through the decades. The focus will be given to the urges and aims of contemporary Nigerian writing, and to the emergence of new Nigerian female authors, such as Helen Oyeyemi and Oyinkan Braithwaite, who are trying to build their own worlds in relation to the period in which their works, respectively Boy, Snow, Bird (2014) and My Sister, The Serial Killer (2018) are written. The contribution of this thesis lies in the analysis and interpretation of Nigerian women's writing and in its evolution from the instant postcolonial times to the contemporary years.