The Feminine Voice of Africa Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 19

The Feminine Voice of Africa - Essay Example Men and women both get caught up by the forces of history and circumstances of their physical and social environment, getting transformed in the process. As a result, they are bound together by a common fate in the face of hardship and oppression to assert their rights. Ousmane portrays the strike from all possible angles and in that respect, the novel is often compared to Émile Zola's masterpiece, Germinal. In God’s Bits of Wood, the strike causes evolution in the self-perceptions of the Africans themselves, both men and women. This is most evident in the women characters—Bamako, Thies, and Dakar. These women go from mutely standing behind the men in their lives, to walking alongside them and eventually marching ahead of them. In the course of the novel, they undergo a metamorphosis in terms of initiative and expression. Ousmane establishes the central issue in the opening pages of the novel through the musings of Niakoro, an aged woman of the community. When the men are able to work the jobs that the train factory provides them, the women are responsible for running the markets, preparing the food, and rearing the children. However with the onset of the strike, the role of bread-winner or perhaps more precisely bread scavenger, shifts to the women. Women go from supporting the strike to actively participating in the strike. Eventually, it is the women that march on foot, over four days from Thies to Dakar.