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Myth Is Its Own Undoing: Approaching Gender Equity Through Gender Dialogue In Ayọbami Adebayọ’s Stay With Me (2017) And Lọla Shonẹyin’s The Secret Lives Of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives (2010)

Oshindoro, Michael Eniola
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1586457496960154

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, English/Literature.
The Western patented term `feminism’ adds another layer to the hegemony of white solipsism in a way that supplants other subjectivities in women’s struggles around the world. However, the emergence of Third World feminisms initiated the necessary process of separating idea feminism from label feminism. The latter bears the insignias of Western feminist principles whereas the former denotes universal dialogic principles of amending strained relations between sexes in a bid to restore equity and balance along political, economic, and sociocultural lines. This thesis recenters idea-feminism in the context of the Nigerian society with a primary focus on the Yoruba people of Southwest Nigeria. Using African cosmology and African oral literature as theoretical insights, I read Ayọbami Adebayọ’s Stay With Me and Lọla Shonẹyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives to understand the nature of myths and myth-making. A body of conventional, yet unwritten laws, myths sanction the modalities for discipline and punishment in the most subtle ways that hide the horror of the violence they perform. Stay With Me and The Secret Lives of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives portray the precarious situations of the lives of the modern Nigerian/Yoruba women in marriage as it relates to myths about children, barrenness, and fidelity, but the most significant import of these texts lies in the agency of the female protagonists. Although cultural expectations weigh heavily on both men and women, women carry additional burdens of oppression, tangential to what Angela Davis (1981) calls “the deformed equality of equal oppression” (Davis 8). Building on the notion of gender dialogue, this thesis interprets African feminism as a dialogic and expands on the vernacularism framework of Womanism to theorize gender relations in Nigeria. This work contends that the most significant breakthrough in the women’s movement in Africa will not be where women merely fill the parliament or occupy the highest seat of power in the land; the biggest victory will be the redefinition of woman, female, girl. Whereas the task is enormous, and the processes involved in the achievement of this renaming will take time to complete, the plasticity of traditional wisdom in African oral literature renders mythic tools like stories, lores, sayings, songs, and proverbs protean and therefore adaptable.
Khani Begum, PhD (Advisor)
Kefa Otiso, PhD (Committee Member)
106 p.
African History; African Literature; African Studies; Language; Literature
African feminism; Yoruba; Culture; Feminism; Myths

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Oshindoro, M. E. (2020). Myth Is Its Own Undoing: Approaching Gender Equity Through Gender Dialogue In Ayọbami Adebayọ’s Stay With Me (2017) And Lọla Shonẹyin’s The Secret Lives Of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives (2010) [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1586457496960154

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Oshindoro, Michael. Myth Is Its Own Undoing: Approaching Gender Equity Through Gender Dialogue In Ayọbami Adebayọ’s Stay With Me (2017) And Lọla Shonẹyin’s The Secret Lives Of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives (2010). 2020. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1586457496960154.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Oshindoro, Michael. "Myth Is Its Own Undoing: Approaching Gender Equity Through Gender Dialogue In Ayọbami Adebayọ’s Stay With Me (2017) And Lọla Shonẹyin’s The Secret Lives Of Baba Sẹgi’s Wives (2010)." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1586457496960154

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.