AFRICAN LITERATURES WRITTEN IN ENGLISH AND SOME FORMS OF SELF-INSCRIPTION

Abstract

This article aims to present some forms of self-inscription of the existences and subjectivities of African women. Among these forms, novels, poems, essays, short stories and testimonies stand out. For the present study, we mainly analyzed some works by Somali-British Nadifa Mohamed who, through novels, poems, essays and short stories, (re)inscribes individual and collective narratives and memories that emerge both from her homeland and from the diaspora. It appears that Nadifa Mohamed's writing work results in a corpus whose content goes against a historical practice of simplifying complexity. In this article, there is also a brief study of some testimonies presented in the work Somalia – the Untold Story: the war through the eyes of Somali women organized and edited by Judith Gardner and Judy El Bushra. In this work, it is observed that testimony as a narrative genre is presented through the voices of African women, more specifically from East Africa, in the most varied forms, including in the format of a poem. Finally, it is worth highlighting that the writings selected for the present study stage multiple formats of representations of the voices, trajectories, experiences and perspectives of African women and reveal the need for a careful look at the specificities of each form of self-inscription.