Author-Meets-Critic on His Only Wife

20th November 2021 | African Studies Association Annual Meeting | Online Event

Session Title: Peace Adzo Medie’s His Only Wife. Session Type: Author Meets Critic

About The Event and Panel

In His Only Wife, feminist author Peace Adzo Medie explores how women and men in modern day Ghana navigate the complicated dynamics of marriage, love, family and societal expectations, and emancipation. Smoothly deploying an intersectional lens, Medie interrogates the junctures and divergencies in the intertwining of class, gender, patriarchy, polygamy and urbanity in telling the story of Afi, the protagonist, and of several other women alongside. The rich cultural narrative backdrops a progressive story that subverts, redefines and reimagines African womanhood and gender norms in a rapidly changing urban landscape such as Accra. His Only Wife explores the tensions inherent in finding visibility and voice for women in a changing and globalised urban, yet traditional, African context. Further, it deviates from an essentialist view of African women, exploring various ways of being ‘woman’ and ‘African’ in various circumstances, and questions the very expectations of what feminist action and women’s rights must be in the context described.

Co-panelists: Nana Akua Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ezinwanyi Adam, Babcock University, Kuukuwa Manful, SOAS, University of London, Gretchen Bauer, University of Delaware, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Babcock University, Peace Adzo Medie, University of Bristol