http://www.syndicatemizzou.org Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:02:22 GMT en-us 40 Center for eResearch Connecting you with the University of Missouri’s innovative research and creative activity http://www.syndicatemizzou.org/images/logo.png 384 80 http://syndicatemizzou.org/resources/gallimore/ipod/gallimore02.m4v Education http://syndicatemizzou.org/resources/gallimore/ipod/gallimore02.m4v Rangira Béa Gallimore’s second book, _L’oeuvre romanesque de Calixthe Beyala: Le renouveau de l’écriture féminine en Afrique francophone sub-saharienne_ (1997), focuses on contemporary Francophone writer Calixthe Beyala. Whereas her first book subverts “the master’s language” by using the French of the slums (_les bidonvilles_) instead of classic French, her second book attempts to subvert patriarchy itself. Providing counterpart to male writers “who idealized the African woman as this beautiful symbol of the earth,” Beyala offers main characters who are forced into prostitution because of sexual abuse or poverty. “It’s very clear in her writing that she’s using the female body discourse. The body in writing is exposed, it is displayed,” explains Gallimore, and indeed Beyala’s tendency to address taboo subjects has created controversy. “It was very shocking for an African woman to write such things,” yet women’s bodies in Beyala’s novels stand as a “symbol of the violated earth, of the bad and the evil” that they have had to endure through their bodies. “You cannot deny the reality of Africa,” responds Beyala to her detractors. 3 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:53:42 GMT