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African Female Circumcision and the Missionary Mentality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Joyce Russell-Robinson
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Extract

Alice Walker and former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado have something in common. Both advocate the cessation of female circumcision in African countries, and both tout themselves as feminists, though Walker, borrowing from African American culture, prefers to be labeled as a womanist. What the elders had in mind when they described young African American women as “womanish,” or as “omanish,” the eclipsed form of that same word, was that such girls were too fast, or that they obtruded upon areas that were not their business. While Schroeder cannot properly be called a womanist (to do so would be to misapply the term), one can say that, similar to Alice Walker, Schroeder is putting herself into other people’s business, specifically the business of female circumcision in African communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1997 , pp. 54 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997 

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Footnotes

*

Joyce Russell-Robinson, an associate professor at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, teaches African American literature and women’s literature. She is a graduate of Bennett College, North Carolina Central University and Emory University where she received the Ph.D. in African American literature.

References

Notes

1. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder. Comment made during “The Disturbing Issue of Female Genital Mutilation,” topic of ABC’s Nightline. 10 February 1994, Journal Graphics.

2. Ibid.

3. Alice, Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy, New York: Pocket Books/Washington Square, 1992 Google Scholar.

4. Nancy C., Lutkehaus and Paul B., Roscoe, Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. xiii Google Scholar.

5. Gloria, Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Signet, 1986), p. 335 Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 334-35.

7. Alice, Walker and Pratibha, Pannar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993 Google Scholar.

8. Af-rica may have had in mind the female circumcision rituals of Papua New Guinea. Lutkehaus and Roscoe discuss sweat licking in their book. See p. 65.

9. Af-rica [Pseud.], Student. Interview by author, 10 May 1994, Raleigh, North Carolina.

10. Esther, Hicks, Infibulation: Female Mutilation in Islamic Northeastern Africa (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1993), p. 109 Google Scholar.

11. Nawal el Saadawi, , The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Boston: Beacon, 1980 Google Scholar.