Feminist intersections: Reading Louise Erdrich and Buchi Emecheta within/across cultural boundaries

This dissertation specifically examines the ways Native American and African feminisms question the assumption that patriarchy and its consequent subordination of women to male dominance are adequately described by traditional western feminism. The dissertation begins with the study of characteristic features of Native American and African feminisms. Chapter II analyzes Louise Erdrich's representation of the Ojibwa women's experiences of oppression in light of the assumption that most Native American women have been oppressed concomitantly by colonialism, classism, and sexism. Chapter III explores Buchi Emecheta's depiction of the oppression of Igbo women in connection with claims by other African feminists that colonialism, classism, and sexism are intertwined in the African women's experience of oppression. In chapter IV, I compare and contrast Erdrich's and Emecheta's representations of the three forms of oppression, identified in the two preceding chapters. I argue that while both writers depict the Ojibwa and Igbo women's subordination to this triple oppression, Erdrich is more critical of economic and cultural oppression than of gentler discrimination and that Emecheta shows an unrelenting emphasis on gender oppression to the neglect of scrutinizing economic and cultural oppression. In chapter V, I discuss the implications and challenges of teaching the works of Erdrich and Emecheta in Gender or Women's Studies. I suggest that students should be exposed to the claims of feminisms arising from Native North America and Africa and to the history of the Ojibwa and Igbo people, before the reading of the works of Louise Erdrich and Buchi Emecheta. This chapter also includes my teaching experience and students' responses to these feminist assumptions of women's oppression.;This dissertation suggests that more research be carried out on the connections between the history of Native American and African women in connection with gender and feminist studies.