Decolonizing Autobiographies: Experience in African Diaspora Women’s Autobiographies

Traditionally, African and Diaspora women’s autobiographies are cornered in the peripheries of world literature and gender and women’s studies.  Situated in the margins, they are approached indulgently as the missing pieces necessary to complete the grand-narrative of the “Universal Subject/Woman.” Gender, race and postcolonial theories painstakingly undertook the task of demonstrating how African and Diaspora women come to voice to emancipate themselves from patriarchal and colonial hegemonies that silenced them at their intersection. This interdisciplinary approach is inscribed within the tradition of decolonization within which women writers of Africa and its Diaspora have been confined without exploring the potentialities of deconstructing/decolonizing gender, race and ethnicities as foundational categories of identity. 

(Excerpt from Hapsatou's proposal)