Browsing by Author "Yitah, H."
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Item (At) Tiring the Naked: Benjamin Kwakye’s Allegory of the Nation in the Clothes of Nakedness(Literature of the African Diaspora 2(8): 94-112., 2007) Yitah, H.In this paper I explore the ways in which the prevalent metaphor of clothes and nakedness drives Kwakye’s political and ethnical agenda in his novel. Kwakye’s metaphor suggests that he considers recourse to the skeptical ideals of the past through image and rhetoric as a viable means for contemporary postcolonial subjects to confront the realities of their world; a world in which the greed and powernanie of the clothes work to erode ethics in the community.Item Authenticity, past and present in Ghanaian children’s literature(Children’s literature in education 1(41): 1-11, 2009) Yitah, H.; Komasi, M.In this paper we examine the portrayal of the “authentic” past in children’s literature in Ghana, as well as the problems it poses for the achievement of the broader goal of moulding children to fit into tomorrow’s society. We look at two main in aspects: the social and moral order portrayed in selected books. We conclude that tradition, more broadly defined, can be effectively sued in children’s book.Item Children’s literature in Ghana: A survey(Children Literature (37): 236-255, 2009) Yitah, H.; Komasi, M.We explore the development of children’s literature in Ghana beginning with its roots in traditional literature in the pre-colonial era, to its transformation since colonial times. We look at its range, nature and character in order to expose the reader to the broader scope of activity in children’s literature in Ghana.Item Conceptions of Motherhood in Proverbs Used by Ghanaian Women(University of Vermont, 2011) Yitah, H.Motherhood has been established as a key distinguishing factor of African gender relations. What remains unexplored is the circumstances under which African women find motherhood to be most fulfilling. In this paper I examine this subject by analyzing proverbs used by Kasena women from northern Ghana. The women take advantage of a socially sanctioned medium, the joking relationship that exists between a woman and her husband’s kin, to critique traditional constructions of motherhood via an innovative use of proverbs. From using clever and witty modifications of traditional proverbs, to creating brave new ones, Kasena women subvert, critique, and deconstruct the meaning of existing proverbs during joking in order to register their views on motherhood. Via their proverbs women indicate that motherhood is neither the only indicator of female identity nor the sole source of female fulfillment, as ‘traditional’ Kasem proverbs seem to suggest. They draw attention to other aspects of their identity, presenting themselves as persons with aspirations and ambitions for individual fulfillment and group well being.Item Controlling deviant wives: Marriage and justice in the early Ghanaian novel(Routledge, 2011) Yitah, H.; Kari, D.This article looks at two early Ghanaian novels, A. Native’s Marita: Or the Folly of Love (serialised in 1886-1887) and R.E. Obeng’s Eighteenpence (1943), which portray conjugal life in colonial Ghana during a time of legislative and judicial transition. They deal with ways in which both the colonial administration and traditional authorities attempted to regulate the contested arena of marriage. The novels create the impression that such external controls freed married women from traditional restraints and turned them into deviant wives who asserted their own interests, overturned gender norms and undermined their husbands’ authority in private and in public. We argue that far from liberating women, the external control of marital affairs left women bereft of traditional support systems and therefore dependent on, and submissive to, men. We conclude that an underlying male angst is responsible for the representation of wives in both novels, as well as for the texts’ silencing of resistant women.Item Defining The Ghanaian Feminist Novel: A Study of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy and Changes and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Not Without Flowers(University of Ghana, 2010-06) Asare-Kumi, A. A.; Mensah, A. N.; Yitah, H.; University of Ghana, College of Humanities, School of LanguagesSince Simon De Beauvoir’s Second Sex (1949), various debates have taken place concerning feminism and its objectives. The definition of feminism and what it means to a group of people or region has also been very controversial. In Africa, feminism has been received with mixed feelings leading to the proposal of alternative terms and definitions in a bid to clearly define the struggle of African women. The search for diversity in feminism that is responsive to the different needs and concerns of different women, especially Ghanaian women, inspires this thesis. This thesis is written on the premise that feminism is universal but varies in objectives as a result of difference in region and culture. The main aim of this thesis is to examine and identify the concerns of feminism in Ghanaian fiction leading to a description of the Ghanaian Feminist Novel. Four novels are discussed using feminist concepts proposed by various African and Ghanaian feminist scholars to determine the nature of feminism in the selected novels. The study shows that the Ghanaian feminist novel portrays consciousness of the subjugation, fears and struggles of women in the Ghanaian socio-cultural context In addition, the analyses isolate four major parameters for identifying the Ghanaian feminist novel: Characters, Situations, Conflicts and Themes. The main characters in the novel are usually educated women, who encounter conflicts that stem from the problem of reconciling the changing roles and responsibilities of Ghanaian women with that of the traditionally accepted ones. The difficulties encountered are marital, political, professional, social and sexual in nature. The above situations also reflect themes (such as issues of poverty, social vice and health) that are of concern to Ghanaian women.Item Disgrace, displacement and reparation in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.(Institute of African Studies Research Review 1(24): 27-36., 2008) Yitah, H.In this paper I argue that the past apartheid South Africa that is represented in Disgrace is a metaphorical borderland where there is no clear cut distinction between self and other. I explore the concept of boundary blurring as a route to re-reading the issue of reparation in the novel, focusing mainly on the boundary of the Eastern Cape as a landscape with a fraught history and a space in which identities are formed and transformed across the boundenes of age, gender and rice.Item The dynamics of place in Lee Smith’s Saving Grace(Globus (1): 39-54, 2010) Yitah, H.In this paper I explore Lee Smith’s use of memory, storytelling and naming practices, especially as they relate to her heroine’s sense of place and determine how she evolves to tell her story. For Gracie, sense of place becomes intricately liked with memory, and as she tells her story and names herself, these two activities both nourish and liberate her, freeing her to create a new path, a new life.Item Fighting with proverbs; Kasena women’s (Re) Definition of female personhood through proverbial jesting(Research in African Literatures. 3(40): 74-95, 2009) Yitah, H.I explore the way Kesena women from Northern Ghana exploit the joking relationship between a woman and her husband’s kin to subvert, contradict and deconstruct the sexist ideology in Kasem proverbs. I the process, they create “counter-proverbs” through which they establish their own signifying terms. I use the conception of the proverb as strategy, as well as the theoretical concepts of positionality, identification and performance to analyse their proverbs.Item Kasena Women’s Critique of Gender Justice through Proverbial Jesting(School of Oriental and African Studies, 2012-06) Yitah, H.This paper analyses proverbs used by Kasena women from northern Ghana in their effort to critique gendered perceptions of justice in their society. This critique takes place within the socially approved medium of the joking relationship that pertains between a Kasena woman and her husband’s kin. The joking relationship permits joking partners to give their views free reign and therefore provides a safe avenue for women to express their own attitudes and values pertaining to justice. They subvert and contradict Kasem proverbs in order to protest the use of gender as a basis for defining women’s roles and rights in the home and in marriage. However, gender justice, as it can be gleaned from the proverbs the women deploy, is not limited to demanding freedom from traditional dependencies and addressing gender inequities. It is broadened to include calls for the recognition of women’s self worth and of their contribution to culture—a conception of justice that has been the subject of recent debates on the definition of justice which have moved the focus from issues of distribution to questions of recognition.Item Migration, Cultural Memory and Identity in Benjamin Kwakye’s The Other Crucifix(African Literature Today, 2016) Yitah, H.; Okyerefo, M.This paper examines the relationship between cultural memory and belongingness in Benjamin Kwakye’s novel, The Other Crucifix, and the ways in which this relationship shapes the identity of African immigrants in America. We find that Kwakye’s novel fills some thematic gaps in the African migration story. Whereas other African migration novels seem more concerned with the history and identity of groups of immigrants, Kwakye is more interested in the identity of individual characters. In addition, while North African migration narratives (and, interestingly, some of his Ghanaian compatriots) typically present illiterate or lowly educated characters who travel to Europe often via illegal means, and whereas his West African precursors are preoccupied with the return of the sojourner and his reunion with his native society, Kwakye depicts a highly educated legal immigrant, Jojo Badu, who struggles to adapt to life in America but resists acculturation on the host country’s terms. For Jojo ‘home’ and identity are defined by cultural memory which in the narrative takes the form of remnant consciousness: ‘the ontological, physical, and spiritual manifestations of reclaiming an African cultural heritage’ (McKoy 2002, 195). In The Other Crucifix home country and host country are conceived in spatial terms along a polarity in which America signifies displacement and psychic chaos while Africa represents continuity and psychic calm. This polarity reflects the changing psychology of the protagonist as he oscillates between the deep anxiety of forgetting his original culture and identity and his desire to adjust to the host society and to create a new identity.Item “The More Storytellers, The Better”: Diversity, Ghanaian Literature and Mabel Dove-Danquah’s Fiction(2013-12-09) Yitah, H.I explore Mabel Dove Danquah’s contribution to the literary arts in Ghana during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Literature of this “nationalist” period is important because it portrays almost all the ideas and ideology of modern African thought and many of the themes, modes and techniques found in African literature today. Moreover, the nationalist writers, through their preoccupation with nationhood, race consciousness, African cultural integrity and the evils of colonialism, announced Ghana’s intellectual independence decades before the end of colonial rule. Mabel Dove-Danquah stands out among this group as a writer whose fiction not only challenged colonial and racial legacies, as was the practice of her time, but also called into question male value systems that denied female personhood and envisioned a new woman who could challenge them. I attempt a gendered comparative analysis of Dove-Danquah’s works among her contemporaries, focusing on her transgressive portraits of female subjectivity, which range from an incipient stage to a very radical stage, and the ways in which these contribute to her distinct literary style.Item “My Story Bursts Forth…”: Re-visioning Female Subjecthood in Gendered Folktales in Northern Ghana(Fabula, 2018-11) Yitah, H.This paper examines contemporary retellings of Ghanaian (Kasem) folktales that engage critically with the social roles and cultural values in the tra-ditional corpus. While in traditional folktales supernatural forces are unleashed to punish females who pursue their own strivings, thus regulating gender iden-tity, in the retold tales female protagonists deploy nantandia, a local Kasem term which encompasses intelligence, initiative and courage, to thwart the power of the supernatural and assert their own subjecthood.Item The native’s nightmares as enabling discourse in Richard Wright’s native son.(The Legon Journal of the Humanities (19): 39-51., 2008) Yitah, H.In this paper I explore Wright’s use of nightmare for creating a field of discourse that is enabling for Bigger Thomas in his quest for self definition. I argue that the nightmares that begin each of the three sections of Native Son constitute a “private” field of discourse for Bigger,, separate form the “objectifying” discourse of the establishment that occupies most of the narrative and that these “internal” and “external” discourses contextualize Bigger’s perception of himselfItem Rethinking the African American Great Migration Narrative: Reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine(The University of Southern Mississippi, 2011) Yitah, H.In Jonah’s Gourd Vine Zora Neale Hurston depicts the South-South migration of her protagonist, John Buddy Pearson as part of the larger exodus of blacks during the early twentieth century. This novel, however, has been ignored in studies of the African American Great Migration narrative, mainly because such scholarship has focused on South-North trajectories. Yet Jonah’s Gourd Vine broadens and challenges dominant ideological models of the migration narrative, particularly the “urban adjustment” model which attributes the plight of black migrants to external factors. Hurston instead offers a look inward into her protagonist to find reasons for his failures, focusing on his individual struggle with his internal “brute beast” which clogs the pathway to his self-discovery. By thus centering her narrative on individual consciousness rather than on socio-cultural factors, Hurston presents a more nuanced view of the Great Migration in African American fiction.Item Throwing stones in Jest: Kasena women’s proverbial revolt(Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship (27): 369-391, 2007) Yitah, H.This paper looks at how Kasena women from Northern Ghana take advantage of a socially sanctioned medium, the joking relationship that exists between an individual and her spouse’s siblings, to subvert and contradict Kasem proverbs in an effort to transcend the misogynist images and connotations of these proverbs as well as to critique patriarchal norms.