Browsing by Author "Haddis, Feven"

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    A Feminist Reading of Nuruddin Farah’s First Trilogy “Variations on The Theme of an African Dictatorship
    (Addis Ababa University, 2009-08) Haddis, Feven; Yazbec, Olga (PhD)
    Gender stereotyping is a cross cultural phenomenon prevalent across boarders regardless of religion, ethnicity or color. The nature and the negative impact of such stereotyping are more pronounced in poorest continents of the world like Africa where development, education, access to media and awareness are scarce. The prevalence of such stereotyping in the continent is the reason which compelled the researcher to engage in studying the contribution of feminist African writers in this regard. This study, thus, primarily focuses on investigating the extent of the reflection of embedded gender stereotyping and the degree of females’ resistance to such stereotyping by feminist African writers, also tries to asses the significance of the novels in eliminating this stereotyping. To this effect, the researcher has employed a purposive sampling technique to select three novels of the first trilogy of Nuruddin Farah’s work which could better show cultural roles of sexes in East African Society, Somalia. In this respect, from the total of 10 novels he wrote from 1970 to 2007, the researcher had to confine herself to the study of only three novels written at the beginning of 1980s. The result of this study has shown that the availability of novels which address the most important problems of femininity like economic dependency, societal rejection, non political participation, etc. However important raising these issues in the novels and the writer is a feminist one is for feminists, the novels have some embedded patriarchal touches which have been exemplified the characters. From the novels, it is also observed that there are female characters who are well-to-do, educated, active political participants and male characters who believe in gender equality in representing the role and representation of both sexes in the contemporary society. However, feminists, in this regard, believe that the literary works should have been seen to address the embedded patriarchal ideologies. Other than this, they will only be a contribution to producing a new patriarchal generation. vi In the sense of identifying the deep-rooted patriarchal ideologies which manifest themselves on both female and male characters instinctively, bringing the change in the novels and thereby the targeted audience, this study, therefore, intends to pinpoint the cultural and gender bias elements which hinder active participation of women in the society. The researcher believes that both the writer and the audience will see the deep-rooted patriarchal embedded elements and be aware of transforming the nature of novels in response to feminists’ aim of creating a new world free from gender bias.