Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon
By Makuchi and Eloise A. Brière
5/5
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About this ebook
Women’s writing in Cameroon has so far been dominated by Francophone writers. The short stories in this collection represent the yearnings and vision of an Anglophone woman, who writes both as a Cameroonian and as a woman whose life has been shaped by the minority status her people occupy within the nation-state.
The stories in Your Madness, Not Mine are about postcolonial Cameroon, but especially about Cameroonian women, who probe their day-to-day experiences of survival and empowerment as they deal with gender oppression: from patriarchal expectations to the malaise of maldevelopment, unemployment, and the attraction of the West for young Cameroonians.
Makuchi has given us powerful portraits of the people of postcolonial Africa in the so-called global village who too often go unseen and unheard.
Makuchi
Makuchi is professor of English and Comparative Literature at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Her publications include a book of short fiction, Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon, and Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference.
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Titles in the series (14)
Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Children of Africa Confront AIDS: From Vulnerability to Possibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrican Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrican Intellectuals and Decolonization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPaths toward the Nation: Islam, Community, and Early Nationalist Mobilization in Eritrea, 1941–1961 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRadical Utu: Critical Ideas and Ideals of Wangari Muta Maathai Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrica Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the Continent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nature of Politics: State Building and the Conservation Estate in Postcolonial Botswana Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrofuturisms: Ecology, Humanity, and Francophone Cultural Expressions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPower, Patronage, and the Local State in Ghana Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for Your Madness, Not Mine
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm not a big reader of short stories, although memorable collections I've enjoyed include books by Lorrie Moore and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and most recently by Margaret Atwood. That said, I really enjoyed this collection of stories set in the English-speaking part of Cameroon. The introduction provides context for the stories, explaining that Cameroon is the only African country to have two European languages as lingua franca, but because of the French postcolonial role, French takes a predominant role despite an official policy of equality between the two languages. So this is one of the topics of the stories - relationships between people who see speaking English or French as a marker of community identity, in the context of limited resources. So in one story, in the midst of a car accident, everyone is arguing in a mix of English, pidgin and French, and Their arguments betrayed linguistic cultural and political assumptions whose validity they no longer particularly cherished... Although there are stories set in a rural village as well as in the city, both contexts are dealing with change. Juliana Makuchi's stories address AIDS, environmental exploitation, migration, domestic abuse and political corruption but the key focus is personal, and as the reader it is impossible to forget the individuals who are at the heart of this collection. Whilst the issues dealt with may make this seem overly serious (and it is tragic too: her description of someone in the last days of AIDS is heartbreaking), it is also humorous; from the observations of the customers at the village's only bar, to the grandma carefully negotiating the benefits of political support in an election year. We switch between pidgen, French and English in the text.Highly recommended.
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