A brave and ground-breaking anthology of queer women's life stories

This social and intellectual history of women’s political activism in postwar Nigeria reveals the importance of gender to the study of nationalism and poses new questions about Nigeria’s colonial past and independent future. In the years following World War II, the women of Abeokuta, Nigeria, staged a successful tax revolt that led to the formation first of the Abeokuta Women’s Union and then of Nigeria’s first national women’s organization, the Nigerian Women’s Union, in 1949. These organizations became central to a new political vision, a way for women across Nigeria to define their interests, desires, and needs while fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship. In The Great Upheaval, Judith A. Byfield has crafted a finely textured social and intellectual history of gender and nation making that not only tells a story of women’s postwar activism but also grounds it in a nuanced account of the complex tax system that generated the “upheaval.” Byfield captures the dynamism of women’s political engagement in Nigeria’s postwar period and illuminates the centrality of gender to the study of nationalism. She thus offers new lines of inquiry into the late colonial era and its consequences for the future Nigerian state. Ultimately, she challenges readers to problematize the collapse of her female subjects' greatest aspiration, universal franchise, when the country achieved independence in 1960.

Nigeria is nicknamed the giant of Africa because of her large population. Without a doubt, her dense population results in cultural diversity with customs and traditions spread throughout her landscape. Despite the revolution sweeping the globe, certain customs and traditions still persist and are practiced even by the educated of her citizens. In Faade, author Ebiye Lavonne Garmel-Urumedji offers fifteen unique stories of women who are currently passing and have passed through painful challenges brought about by these long-standing customs and traditions. The selections tell of child marriage, female circumcision, emotional and physical abuse, polygamy, Abiku phenomenon, and more. The collection provides insight into the lives of these women who have learned from a tender age to hide their pain and keep their lives private. Told from the heart, Faade shares how some of them overcame their challenges, while other tales narrate how some women wallowed in their misery and allowed their sorrow to swallow them up. Meant to instill positivity into the lives of Nigerian women, this collection offers insight into challenges many face in todays world.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a Nigerian feminist who fought for suffrage and equal rights for her countrywomen long before the second wave of the women's movement in the United States. She also joined the struggle for Nigerian independence as an activist in the anticolonial movement.For Women and the Nation is the story of this courageous woman, one of a handful of full-length biographies of African women activists. It will be welcomed by students of women's studies, African history, and biography, as well as by opponents of the Nigerian military regime that has held one of her sons, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, in solitary confinement since August 1995.CHERYL JOHNSON-ODIM, chair and associate professor of history at Loyola University in Chicago, is coeditor of Expanding the Boundaries of Women's History. NINA EMMA MBA, senior lecturer in history at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, is the author of Nigerian Women Mobilized and Ayo Rosijc.

This books represents a survey of the historical experience of women in the Niger Delta region, intending to fill the gap in information on Nigerian women. It arises from a conference on historiography and women's history, and focuses on the documentation of women's contribution to historical development, or rather lack thereof, which has resulted in the invisibility of women in historical narratives. It advocates gender as a tool of historical analysis; discusses the corrective role of Gender Studies, and to what extend expansion in this field is providing a solution. The volume includes a contribution by the renowned Nigerian feminist Professor of History at the University of Ibadan, Awe Bolanle.

Ogunyemi uses the novels to trace a Nigerian women's literary tradition that reflects an ideology centered on children and community. Of prime importance is the paradoxical Mammywata figure, the independent, childless mother, who serves as a basis for the postcolonial woman in the novels and in society at large. Ogunyemi tracks this figure through many permutations, from matriarch to writer, her multiple personalities reflecting competing loyalties. This sustained critical study counters prevailing "masculinist" theories of black literature in a powerful narrative of the Nigerian world.

In analysing a range of materials that testify to the wide spectrum of women's experiences in Nigeria, this groundbreaking collection seeks to draw attention to neglected aspects of women's lives in Nigerian society as a whole. Exploring the historical, developmental and socio-cultural experiences of women across Nigeria's cultures, it reappraises their role as historical actors and helps to facilitate a more encompassing view of their place in society and their still underestimated contribution to social development.

While providing critical perspectives on women, gender, sex and sexuality, and the colonial encounter, she considers how it was possible for this woman to take on the office and responsibilities of a traditionally male role.