Funny, Yet Sorrowful: Narratives of Empowerment and Empathy in Woman- Against-Woman Struggles

Abstract

As in many places around the world, in Malawi stories about marital conflicts and sex scandals provide engaging and entertaining topics of conversation. Despite the universality of the topic, however, these stories are shaped by locally and regionally distinctive concerns, plot structures, imagery, and motifs. Indeed, some stories may be said to fall into patterned narrative genres. Such is the case with accounts in Malawi of a woman fighting another woman about a man with whom both claim a sexually intimate relationship. The woman against woman fight story genre provides a framework not only for recounting such struggles but also for interpreting them. In this chapter, I present narratives of wives challenging sexual rivals as a way to explore the logic and impact of woman -against-woman aggressive strategies, and also interrogate the role that oral narratives play in these dramas.