“The More Storytellers, The Better”: Diversity, Ghanaian Literature and Mabel Dove-Danquah’s Fiction
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2013-12-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
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.