Abstract
This chapter evaluates the principal themes in Nwanyibuife1 Flora Nwapa’s literary production and historical lessons that could be drawn from her writings.2 While acknowledging the intellectual contributions of Nwapa to the development of scholarly focus on Igbo culture and women’s studies, the chapter also reconciles the contradictions in her fictional representations of women vis-à-vis their actual historical experiences and their place within Oguta’s and Igbo worldviews. For instance, how do we reconcile the primacy of motherhood in Oguta and Igbo society with Nwapa’s elevation of economic power as the ultimate source of fulfillment for women, especially childless ones? The Igbo condemned adultery, which could attract sever punishments such as death and enslavement, yet in Nwapa’s fictional world, it was condoned as long as it resulted in motherhood. She represents Uhamiri, the Goddess of Oguta Lake, as a deity that denies her worshippers the gift of procreation. Yet in reality, the goddess has been credited with the gift of fertility and human reproduction among other functions she performed.
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Notes
One of my elementary school classmates, who later became my friend, was named Nwanyibuife. Nwanyibuife was the fourth and last child of her parents’ four daughters. There was too much pressure from members of her extended family and community on her father to marry another woman and also on her mother to allow another wife for her husband since they did not have any son. The burning question was who would continue the family lineage after the father passed away? Nevertheless, the couple stuck together and weathered the storm. They argued that daughters are children and important too. If they could train the four girls to become responsible adults, they would be better off than having a dozen stupid and irresponsible sons. Several years later, Nwanyibuife and her sisters became responsible career women. Three of the girls got married and one stayed behind to carry on the family lineage, assuming the position of a female son. The girls took very good care of their parents. When their father passed away, the girls gave him a befitting burial ceremony that was the talk of the town. Nwanyibuife’s sister, who stayed behind is now having children for the family by a special arrangement. Her children answer the family name. She now assumes multiple gender identities as a daughter, a female son and a female father. She has inherited the family property with which she takes care of her children, who would continue the family lineage. Nwanyibuife’s parents have been vindicated and their determination to stick together and train their four daughters has paid off, demonstrating that after all women are “something” (Umunwanyibuife) or a woman is something (Nwanyibuife). For the analysis of complex gender identities among the Igbo and other ethnic groups in Nigeria, see Gloria Chuku, “Women and the Complexity of Gender Relations,” in Toyin Falola, ed., Nigeria in the Twentieth Century(Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 79–100. For consistency, Flora Nwapa is used throughout this chapter even though she remained married to Gogo Nwakuche until her death.
This chapter is an enlarged version of a piece I published as “Flora Nwapa: The Matrix of African Women’s Studies,” Asian Women16 (2003): 21–44. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the African Studies Association Conference in Houston, Texas, 2001.
Ugwuta is the name used by the community, which the British colonizers distorted as Oguta. Since then, Oguta has remained the official name of the town. It is thus the name used in this chapter.
See Gloria Chuku, “ ‘Crack Kernels, Crack Hitler’: Export Production Drive and Igbo Women during the Second World War,” in Judith A. Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison, eds., Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 219–244.
See G. Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900-1960(New York: Routledge, 2005), especially Chapter 6; “From Petty Traders to International Merchants: A Historical Account of Three Igbo Women of Nigeria in Trade and Commerce, 1886 to 1970,” African Economic History27(1999): 1–22.
Flora Nwapa’s hometown of Oguta, located on a beautiful lake, was a small fishing and trading community, which became an important center of palm produce trade in the nineteenth century. Oguta women dominated this trade and were therefore known for their industriousness and uncanny business acumen. Many of the women traders became economically independent, influential and powerful. Flora’s mother and aunt, the famous Mary Nzimiro, distinguished themselves as successful entrepreneurs. Martha and Mary came from a family of influential female traders. Their mother (Flora’s maternal grandmother), the indomitable Madam Ruth Onumonu Uzoaru, has been described as “a veritable Amazon among traders.” So, growing up at Oguta, the young Flora was influenced by the images and profiles of these powerful women. See Chuku, Igbo Women, Chapter 6; “From Petty Traders to International Merchants”; S. Leith-Ross, African Women: A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria(London: Faber and Faber, 1939), 343.
Marie Umeh, “Introduction: Historicizing Flora Nwapa,” in Marie Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa: Critical and Theoretical Essays(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998), 10 (quoting Ezenwa-Ohaeto).
See Marie Umeh, “Part One: Igbo Women: Culture and Literary Enterprise,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 46; “The Poetics of Economic Independence for Female Empowerment: An Interview with Flora Nwapa,” Research in African Literatures26, no. 2 (1995): 22–29.
The goddess of the Oguta Lake is called different names by local populations including “Uhammiri” (Uhamiri), “Ogbuide.” Her praise names include “Eze Mmiri” (Water Monarch) and “Eze Nwanyi” (Female Monarch). See Sabine Jell-Bahlsen, The Water Goddess in Igbo Cosmology: Ogbuide of Oguta Lake(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2008).
Chuku, “From Petty Traders to International Merchants.” Lady Martha Nwapa was one of the three women studied in this article. See also Chuku, Igbo Women, 192–194.
This school was founded by Flora’s aunt, Mary Nzimiro and her husband, Richard Nzimiro, the first indigenous mayor of Port Harcourt, in honor of their only daughter who died in Glasgow, Scotland, while studying medicine.
Nwapa’s encounter with Achebe was a blessing because it opened the door of publishing for her. It has been reported that Achebe was the one who introduced Nwapa to the Heinemann publishers and played a significant role in the publishing of her first novel, Efuru in 1966.
Flora Nwapa and Ukpabi Asika of Onitsha town were classmates at the University College, Ibadan, in the early to mid-1950s, but it was her personality, expertise and work ethics that earned her the appointment.
Umeh, “Introduction: Historicizing Flora Nwapa,” 10 (quoting Katherine Frank in Africa Now, May 1983, 61–62).
Some of the children’s books published by Nwapa’s companies included Mammywater(1979), My Animal Colouring Book(1979), The Adventures of Deke(1980), The Miracle Kittens(1980) and My Tana Alphabet Book(1981), all written by Flora Nwapa; Eme Goes to School(1980) and The Adventures of Tulu, the Little Monkey(1980) by Ifeoma Okoye; and How Plants Scattered(1980) by Obiora Moneke. See EzenwaOhaeto, “Breaking Through: The Publishing Enterprise of Flora Nwapa,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 189–199.
Bankole Olayebi, “Conversation with Flora Nwapa,” The African Guardian, September 18, 1986, 40.
Flora Nwapa, “Writers, Printers and Publishers,” The Guardian(Lagos, Nigeria), August 17, 1988, 16. Her publishing company had to face the severe competition from the three mega-publishing companies—Heinemann, Longman and Macmillan—which dominated the Nigerian market. This was compounded by inadequate state-sponsored support facilities such as libraries, bookshops and book clubs.
Ifeoma Okoye is an example. As indicated in note 15 above, Flora Nwapa and Company published some of Okoye’s works at the beginning of her career as a writer. Since then, she has published other works, some of which won awards. These are Behind the Clouds(Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1982); Men Without Ears (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1984); Chimere(Ikeja, Nigeria: Longman Nigeria, 1992); and The Trial and Other Stories(New York: African Heritage Press, 2005).
See, for instance, Chukwuemeka Ike, “Foreword,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspec- tives, xiii; Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 131; “Introduction: The Invalid, Dea(r)th, and the Author: The Case of Flora Nwapa, akaProfessor (Mrs.) Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwakuche,” Research in African Literatures26, no. 2 (1995): 5; Umeh, “The Poetics of Economic Independence,” 22. It is important to note that Kenyan Grace Ogot published short stories before 1966, and her first novel—The Promised Land, was published in Nairobi, Kenya by East African Publishing House in 1966. But the publication of Nwapa’s Efuru in London gave it a wider publicity than Ogot’s work.
Flora Nwapa, Efuru(London: Heinemann Books, 1966); Idu(London: Heinemann Books, 1970); Never Again(Enugu, Nigeria: Nwamife Publishers, 1975); One Is Enough(Enugu, Nigeria: Tana Press, 1981); and Women Are Different(Enugu, Nigeria: Tana Press, 1986).
Flora Nwapa, This is Lagos and Other Stories(Enugu, Nigeria: Nwankwo-Ifejika, 1971); and Wives at War and Other Stories(Enugu, Nigeria: Tana Press, 1980).
Flora Nwapa, Emeka—Driver’s Guard(London: University of London Press, 1972); Mammy Water; My Tana Colouring Book; The Miracle Kittens; Adventures of Deke; Journey to Space(Enugu, Nigeria: Flora Nwapa Books, 1980); My Animal Number Book(Enugu, Nigeria: Flora Nwapa Books, 1981); My Tana Alphabet Book(Enugu, Nigeria: Flora Nwapa Books, 1981).
Flora Nwapa, The First Lady(Enugu, Nigeria: Tana Press, 1993).
Flora Nwapa, Cassava Song and Rice Song(Enugu, Nigeria: Tana Press, 1986).
Examples are: Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savanna(New York: Anchor, 1987); and Wole Soyinka, Ake: The Years of Childhood(London: Rex Collings Ltd., 981). In Chinua Achebe’s Anthills, for example, women’s subordinate position is somewhat redressed in the name given to the heroine of the novel, Beatrice Nwanyibuife. This is an assertion that women are a force to be reckoned with. Beatrice was also a liberated powerful woman.
Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund, eds., Female “Circumcision” in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 2000); Gloria Chuku, “African Women and New Orientation: Defining the Solution from Within,” paper presented at the Workshop organized by the Institute for the Study of Gender in Africa, UCLA, June 10, 1999. See also Obioma Nnaemeka, ed., Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), which is a polemic to Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993) (title for a video documentary and a book of explanation).
Elleke Boehmer, “Stories of Women and Mothers: Gender and Nationalism in the Early Fiction of Flora Nwapa,” in Susheila Nasta, ed., Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 12.
Chuku, Igbo Women, 21–24.
Ibid.; “From Petty Traders to International Merchants”; “Women in the Economy of Igboland, 1900-1970: A Survey,” African Economic History, 23 (1995): 37–50; Niara Sudarkasa, Where Women Work: A Study of Yoruba Women in the Marketplace and in the Home (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1974).
Chuku, Igbo Women; “From Petty Traders to International Merchants.” See also Sudarkasa, Where Women Work.
In Efuru, 140–141, Flora Nwapa narrates how Gilbert, Efuru’s husband on a trading trip to Ndoni and at Ogwu over the decision to buy groundnuts or corn abandoned her for almost two days. This author has recorded how some women were restricted by their husbands from engaging in certain trades. Familial responsibilities were also a hindrance for women to engage in long-distance trade that could take them away from their homes for days. See Chuku, Igbo Women.
Nwapa, Efuru, 137.
Nwapa, Idu, 150.
Growing up in Igbo society and being a region where I have carried out research activities, I have encountered women who went as far as encouraging their husbands to marry their younger sisters for purposes of procreation.
Nwapa, One Is Enough, 154.
See Philomena E. Okeke-Ihejirika, Negotiating Power and Privilege: Igbo Career Women in Contemporary Nigeria(Athens, OH: Ohio University Research in International Studies, 2004).
Elderly African parents do not always suffer the loneliness their Western counterparts experience because their children and grandchildren take care of them and keep them company. In addition, with lack of adequate state-sponsored welfare services for the elderly in many African countries, children and relatives provide these services.
Nwapa, Idu, 159.
Flora Nwapa, “Women and Creative Writing in Africa,” in Obioma Nnaemeka, ed., Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc, 1998), 97.
Theodora Akachi Ezeigbo, “Myth, History, Culture, and Igbo Womanhood in Flora Nwapa’s Novels,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 53.
Nwapa, Efuru, 97.
See Paul Bohannan and Philip Curtin, Africa and Africans, 3rd edition (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988), 120–121.
Marie Umeh, “Signifyin(g) the Griottes: Flora Nwapa’s Legacy of (Re)Vision and Voice,” Research in African Literatures26, no. 2 (1995): 118.
For different types of widowhood practices in African societies, see Betty Potash, ed., Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986).
In Igbo cosmology, it is believed that water deities offered their worshippers three major gifts from which they must choose two. These are children, long life and wealth. It could be that Efuru chose wealth and long life if we apply this belief, because at last, as Uhamiri’s priestess, she was wealthy, happy and felt self-fulfilled even when she did not have children or any husband.
In Flora Nwapa, “Priestesses and Power among the Riverine Igbo,” in Flora E. S. Kaplan, ed., Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power: Case Studies in African Gender(New York: The New York Academy of Science, 1997), 415–424, she revealed her desire to write a sequel to Efuruto be titled Efuru in Her Glory. This is intended to explore women’s spiritual power in society. Though not published before she died in 1993, Nwapa was able to complete the novel with the title The Lake Goddess.
Oladele Taiwo, Female Novelists of Modern Africa(London: Macmillan, 1984), 52.
Nwapa, Never Again, 84.
For the most extensive study of the Uhamiri water goddess, see Jell-Bahlsen, The Water Goddess.
Chuku, Igbo Women; “From Petty Traders to International Merchants”; and Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status, and Social Change in Colonial Lagos(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Chuku, Igbo Women; “The Militancy of Nigerian Women since the Colonial Period: Evolution and Transformation,” UFAHAMU26, no. 1 (1998): 55–76; Van Allen, “ ‘Sitting on a Man’: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women,” Canadian Journal of African Studies6, no. 2 (1972): 165–182. On African women and the effects of colonialism, see Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi, eds., Women in Colonial Histories(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002); LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): 1–39.
Nwapa, Women Are Different, 61, 67–69.
See Chuku, Igbo Women; N. E. Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activities in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965(Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1982).
Nwapa, Efuru, 193–195.
Ibid., 106–111.
See Eddie Iroh, Toads of War(London: Heinemann, 1979); Cyprian Ekwensi, Survive the Peace(London: Heinemann, 1976); and C. K. Aniebo, The Anonymity of Sacrifice(London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974).
Chidi Amuta, “The Nigerian Civil War and the Evolution of Nigerian Literature,” Canadian Journal of African Studies17, no. 1 (1983): 93.
Gloria Chuku, “Biafran Women under Fire: Strategies in Organizing Local and Transborder Trades During the Nigerian Civil War,” in Eghosa Osaghae, Ebere Onwudiwe, and Rotimi Suberu, eds., The Nigerian Civil War and Its Aftermath(Ibadan, Nigeria: John Archers Publishers, 2002), 216–228.
Nwapa, One Is Enough, 49.
Ibid., 50.
Florence Stratton, “ ‘The Empire, Far Flung’: Flora Nwapa’s Critique of Colonialism,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 133.
See Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Benedict Naanen, “ ‘Itinerant Gold Mines’: Prostitution in the Cross River Basin of Nigeria, 1930–1950,” African Studies Review34, no. 2 (1991): 57–79.
Leith-Ross, African Women, 219–220.
Nina E. Mba, “Foreword,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, xx (quoting a 1973 speech that Flora Nwapa gave to a women’s group at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka).
Flora Nwapa and many Africans do not subscribe to Alice Walker’s “womanism” primarily due to its advocacy for lesbianism. See Alice Walker, The Color Purple(Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1986).
Buchi Emecheta, “Nwayioma, Biko Nodunma,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 30–31.
In a Book Fair in London, 1984, Flora Nwapa vehemently refused to be called a feminist. She reluctantly preferred womanist. A few years after, in a talk given at Sarah Lawrence College, New York on April 23, 1991, she insisted that she did not want to be branded a feminist, but at the same time she denied knowing what the implications of being a womanist were. See Alison Perry, “Meeting Flora Nwapa,” WestAfrica, 18 (1984): 1262; Ogunyemi, Africa Wo/man Palava, 133.
Gay Wilentz, “Not Feminist but Afracentrist: Flora Nwapa and the Politics of African Cultural Production,” in Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives, 143–160.
See Gloria Chuku, “Igbo Women and the Production of Historical Knowledge: An Examination of Unwritten and Written Sources,” in Toyin Falola and Adam Paddock, eds., Emergent Themes and Methods in African Studies: Essays in Honor of Adiele E. Afigbo(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 255–278.
See, for instance, Mary D. Mears, “Choice and Discovery: An Analysis of Women and Culture in Flora Nwapa’s Fiction,” PhD dissertation, English Department, University of South Florida, 2009; Pauline Nalova Lyonga, “Uhamiri, or, A Feminist Approach to African Literature: An Analysis of Selected Texts by Women in Oral and Written Literature,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1985.
Research in African Literatures26, no. 2 (1995), edited by Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi and Marie Umeh.
Umeh, ed., Emerging Perspectives. Other works that focused on Flora Nwapa’s writings include Florence Stratton, Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender(London: Routledge, 1994); Helen Chukwuma, ed., Feminism in African Literature(Enugu, Nigeria: New Generations Books, 1994).
Nwapa, Efuru, 221. See also Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood(New York: George Braziller, 1979).
They are the May 1994 Annual International Conference on African Literature and the English Language at the University of Calabar, Nigeria; the July 1994 International Conference on Women in Africa and African Literature held at the African Research Institute at La Trobe University in Australia; and the March 1995 African Literature Association Conference at Columbus, Ohio, United States.
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Chuku, G. (2013). Nwanyibuife Flora Nwapa, Igbo Culture and Women’s Studies. In: Chuku, G. (eds) The Igbo Intellectual Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311290_11
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