Of Masquerading and Weaving Tales of Empowerment: Gender, Composite Consciousness, and Culture-Specificity in the Early Novels of Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Marlene De La Cruz-Guzmán December 2014 © 2014 Marlene De La Cruz-Guzmán. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Of Masquerading and Weaving Tales of Empowerment: Gender, Composite Consciousness, and Culture-Specificity in the Early Novels of Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami by MARLENE DE LA CRUZ-GUZMÁN has been approved for the English Department of Ohio University and the College of Arts and Sciences by Joseph McLaughlin Associate Professor of English Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT DE LA CRUZ-GUZMÁN, MARLENE, Ph.D., December 2014, English Of Masquerading and Weaving Tales of Empowerment: Gender, Composite Consciousness, and Culture-Specificity in the Early Novels of Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami Director of Dissertation: Joseph McLaughlin This dissertation explores the development of a risky but empowering culture- specific women's consciousness by the protagonists of Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami’s early novels. My insertion of Jameson’s “primacy of the national situation” in the development of a woman’s composite consciousness allows the reader to gain an understanding of women’s marginalization and subsequent empowerment in a specific setting such as Casablanca, Morocco or Lagos, Nigeria. The composite factor is essential to understand the lived experiences of people in specific cultures within the postcolonial nation, for it acknowledges the importance of traditional resources but also the modern liberation tools available to the women. This study places Atta and Lalami’s characters squarely in their cultural milieu so that they are read in their social, economic, political, racial, ethnic, and religious contexts. Just as Abouzeid argued that progress in studying women must be centered on women’s social and political milieu because it is there that women’s agency and oppression can be localized and contextualized, this study argues that women’s empowerment is, in fact, grounded on what it means to be a woman in her particular society with its cultural expressions and norms. This approach focuses on a very practical and empowering experience for women as it ties them even more closely to their communities, even as they advocate for more options than were previously available to 4 them. This culture-specificity empowers these characters to function even more efficiently as women who continually change and improve their communities in Nigeria and Morocco. Atta and Lalami’s use of the concept of the composite consciousness in the frame of the local tradition serves as a unifying metaphor for each novel. This composite consciousness approach has the potential to answer Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s call for a paradigm that is culture-specific yet creates solidarity across subjectivities and across the globe without erasing difference. 5 DEDICATION Dedicated to the inspiring women no longer waiting to tell their stories Gladys Leticia Guzmán Bobadilla Consuelo Rowland de Bascuas Concha Aguilar Corzo de de la Cruz to those they have inspired Cristina Maria Bascuas Rowland Juana Ines de la Cruz Giles Karla Verena Guzmán Vielman Reyna Elizabeth Guzmán Ibarra and to those who have yet to share theirs Audrey, the joy in every day and every book Sophie, my star of wisdom and hope Olivia, the daughter of my heart 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Joseph McLaughlin, Mara Holt, Nicole Reynolds, and Julie White whose guidance and academic support made it possible to complete this project. I am also grateful for Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami’s on-going encouragement and for Lillian Schanfield’s dedication as she plants the seeds of feminism. The Kachoub family showed me great kindness and facilitated my research stay in Morocco, and Hassan Zrizi gracefully hosted my university talk and encouraged my future study of Moroccan literature. I would like to acknowledge the English Department at Ohio University for a two-year graduate research fellowship and the Center for African Studies for two years of the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Sudanese Arabic. I thank Duane Bruce, Joseph Venosa, and Michelle Clouse for their critical contributions and endless encouragement and Josie Bloomfield and Leeanna Morgan for their support. Stefan Gleissberg’s assistance as project and life co-editor has also been invaluable. No words can express my gratitude to my mother, Cristina Maria Bascuas Rowland, who inspired me to pursue studies in English and supported me every step of the way. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ...............................................................................................................................3 Dedication ...........................................................................................................................5 Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................6 Chapter One: Framing Women’s Composite Consciousness: Culture-Specific Empowerment in Atta and Lalami’s Novels.......................................................................8 Chapter Two: Masquerading Men and Disbelieving Women: Developing a Composite Consciousness in Atta’s Everything Good Will Come ...................................42 Chapter Three: Affirming Trans-generational Progress: Stopping the Beating Drums of Patriarchal Trance in Atta’s Swallow ...............................................................74 Chapter Four: Embracing Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits: (Re)weaving Jenara’s Tale into a Composite Consciousness .............................................................................123 Chapter Five: Silencing the Over Voice of Patriarchy in Secret Son: Coupling a Rawiya’s Voice and Composite Consciousness .............................................................157 Chapter Six: Weaving a Tale of Women’s Composite Consciousness: Unmasking Patriarchal Power in the Early Novels of Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami ............................194 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................211 8 CHAPTER ONE: FRAMING WOMEN’S COMPOSITE CONSCIOUSNESS: CULTURE-SPECIFIC EMPOWERMENT IN ATTA AND LALAMI’S NOVELS This project analyzes the development of a composite consciousness by the female protagonists in Sefi Atta and Laila Lalami’s first two novels. It also contextualizes their emancipation and activism within their post-colonial national setting and their distinct cultural frameworks. This study privileges the culture-specific expression of emancipation in the novels, the feminist scholarly methodology associated with Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Solidarity model, and close readings of the novels’ social, cultural, and historical contexts. Finally, by utilizing the traditional masquerade and domestic storytelling as conceptual frameworks for the novels, I argue that Atta and Lalami write their protagonists into the privileged positions of lead dancer and storyteller, respectively. Thus, these alternative models of womanhood guide the women on their journeys toward self-determination, modified relationships between men and women, and reform in their own societies. The Internationalism of the National Situation Culture-specificity is the cornerstone of this analysis, for it provides “a way of respecting the primacy of the national situation and also making it possible for an international network of intellectuals and cultures” to thrive and support one another (Jameson 94). The starting point of understanding is this national context, and it allows the reader to gain an understanding of women’s marginalization and subsequent empowerment in concrete settings such as Casablanca, Morocco or Lagos, Nigeria while 9 also making connections with the experiences of others across the globe in what Jameson names the “internationalism of the national situations.” It converts “the binary and invidious slogan of difference into the rather different call for situation-specificity, for a positioning that always remains concrete and reflexive” (xi). I ultimately argue that the national situation in Atta and Lalami’s novels is the key to understanding the broader trends of women’s experience of oppression at the national and international level. Sefi Atta’s Swallow (2008) illustrates that “our intellectual and cultural relations to each other pass through the primacy of the national situation understood in the larger sense, through the concrete regional situation,” and we “understand each other through those situations” (Jameson 94). In the novel, a Yoruba adire dyer who has arrived from the east of Nigeria to trade in the Makoku marketplace articulates the resonance of women’s experience across Nigeria. First, she focuses on women’s lack of solidarity and support for each other when other local dyers begin to harass Arike about her high productivity. She consoles Arike: Don’t pay them any mind, Sister Arike. Let me tell you, I’ve traversed this country and it’s the same all over. We women, we sabotage each other instead of working together” and “We don’t come together…. We should. We can’t and then, when the time comes, we wonder why we’re lagging behind the men” (190). She highlights the exploitation of women