Female Poets, Essay Example

Introduction

Female poets speak in as many different voices as male poets.  At the same time, an African woman’s experience is never the same as a man’s and female poets, as well as certain male writers, often reflect how a “man’s world” creates real oppression.  It is often an ugly experience because men will victimize women, and in more than one way.  This is a reality seen in the stories of Yvonne Vera and Mohammed Naseehu Ali, and it is the force behind the poetry of Warsan Shire.  This then goes to poetry and fiction that is disturbing, angry, sad, and centered on how men create and destroy the lives of women.  As the following examines, “Dead Swimmers,” “The Manhood Test,” and the poetry of Warsan Shire reveal how African writers translate the ways in which men dominate women and bring pain to the world of women.

Discussion

Ali’s “The Manhood Test” is strong evidence of female victimization.  Mr. Rafique is dealing with an unhappy wife who wants a divorce, and the misery of their marriage is widely known: “The fights between him and Zulaikha became regular entertainment for the housefolks, who sat and laughed watching the tragicomedy unfold.” In their world, such divorces are given to wives only if there is proof that the husband is impotent.  What then occurs is that the couple must have sex in front of an official witness.  The test does not go well, just as Rafique is aware that the entire town is gathered outside the palace and is maligning him. When Rafique leaves the test, for example, rumors fly that he must have failed.  More to the point, the people then assume that their son was fathered by another man: “Najim was someone else’s son after all, a child forced on him by ‘his harlot mother.’” All of this then reinforces a powerful oppression on women, rather than on men.  It is true that the men here face a degrading ritual, but the test itself renders women as objects who exist to give pleasure to men and bear their children.  In this world, a woman’s only right to leave her husband relies on his being unable to perform sexually.  It further implies that being sexually satisfied is all a woman seeks. Zulai is strong and, once free of Rafique, goes on to pursue her own interests independently.  Importantly, however, she is now known as a bazawara, a word used to describe any divorced woman as “damaged goods.”  Zulai refuses to accept this idea of herself, but the point remains that it is the perception of her world.  Ali has her marrying again six years later, and it does not seem coincidental that this happens 200 miles away. Consequently, Ali’s test of manhood exists as a means of reinforcing the oppressed role of women in Africa.

“Dead Swimmers” is a poetic story, as the narrator recounts her life with her family. From the beginning, the story seems to celebrate female relationships within a family.  It is made clear, for example, that Gogo represents another era.  She speaks only the Shona language, and she has no patience for her daughter’s display of her own education.  The narrator, Ntombehhle, takes the grandmother to Victoria Falls for a vacation, but the old woman is lost there.  Gogo can only perceive land in terms of habitability, and all the water of the Falls disturbs her because she sees no way to grow crops there.  At the same time, this African world presented by Vera is heavily marked by the subjugation of women.  It is clear that having only daughters disgusts the father.  He accepted the birth of Ntombehhle, but: “Then Zanele was born and my father cursed again and said two girls are enough. He left and never returned.” Then, there is the change in the mother.  Although she educates herself and creates a new life, there is the sense that this is forced, as in Gogo’s dismissal of her daughter’s elevated language. Far more disturbing, however, is Zanele.  Married, she is horrified that her mother-in-law places an egg between her legs, to test if she has been with other men.  Zanele has has twins but she refuses to care for them, and her husband’s and family’s response is harsh. The husband has decided that, if she does not change, he will keep the children and “dump her” at the insane asylum. For him, the reality is that she is no real woman, because any mother must automatically love and care for her children. In the two stories, then, it is seen that African women exist as men permit them to exist.

For poet Warsan Shire, sexuality is connected to how women view their existences, and because sexuality is how women are defined by men. In “Beauty,” the poet is describing her older sister’s obsession with sex.  The poets presents her washing her private areas while chewing gum, and she screams in the night while having sex.  However it happened, this sister has been molded to believe with all her being that nothing matters more than being with a man.  At the same time, and even more powerfully, the poem ends with an important statement: “Our mother has banned her from saying God’s name.” The mother is obviously disgusted with this daughter’s behavior, but the reader then must wonder how all of this came to be.  This seems to be a world of only women, and women left with identities created by men.

Violence is more strong in “Your Mother’s First Kiss.”  The poem gains a great deal of impact through the second-person narration; another woman is commenting on this reality and this adds a hardness to the already hard story.  The mother in question was overwhelmed when the man first made love to her: “On waking she found her dress was wet and sticking/ to her stomach.” By the poem’s end it seems that the main point is how the man, seen by the woman years later, is the father of her daughter, who is the girl being addressed by the narrator.  What has more power, however, is the identity of this man.  At the poem’s beginning it is made clear that, when the war came, he became a rapist.  There is then the sense that nothing has really changed, and that his sex with the mother years ago probably had a quality of rape to it.  All of this then creates a feeling of isolation and victimization.

Legacy and victimization are even more forceful in “Things We Had Lost in the Summer.” The poem is a scene with the poet and her cousins, just returned from Nairobi.  In the background is the poet’s mother, watching and checking to see if the girls are “all right.”  She also is challenged by the poet’s awakening sexuality.  On one level, the poem is a celebration of female closeness and beauty.  On another, however, the poem is really about danger.  What has happened to these cousins is female genital mutilation, or circumcision, and this seems to be the fate in store for the poet.  Shire does not talk about pain or the nightmare of such a surgery.   This, however, only adds to the sense of complete victimization.  Lastly, “Ugly” brings together completely the ways in which women become nothing in a world ruled by men.  Here, the poet is scolding the mother of the “ugly” girl, asking why she did not warn her child.  At the same time, it seems that no warning could protect this girl.  She is a living symbol of war and everything about her is a reminder of why men fight and die: “Your daughter’s face is a small riot,/ her hands are a civil war.” No man will love her because she does not serve as the distraction from war men require.  The bitter truth of this is expressed by the poet in the final lines, in that, ugly as she is, the girl “wears the world well.”  If her case is hopeless, she is still a perfect representation of a larger hopelessness.  It is the world as shaped by men, and who then make victims and sacrifices out of women.

Conclusion

It may be expected that an African female poet would address issues of war and male oppression of women.  Warsan Shire does this, in fact.  However, her poetic perspective is different.  She does not reflect violence itself in her tone, or even give into angry language over issues such as female genital mutilation.  Instead, she brings the reader into the lost and strange world of the African woman.  This is also true of Ali and Vera’s stories. Ultimately, the poetry and brief stories discussed reveal how African writers translate the ways in which men dominate women, and bring legacies of loss and pain to their world.