Women and indigenous resistance in tess onwueme’s tell it to women and what mama said

This chapter focuses on women and indigenous resistance in African literature, particularly exploring the representation of the ways in which women have redefined and deployed indigenous forms to register resistance either to address social ills, their marginalization or to empower themselves. Although there is an intra-gender power hierarchy, Onwueme's play suggests that the women galvanize at moments when their collective interests are threatened. Africanist scholars agree in general that African women have been part of indigenous resistance either to colonization or to contemporary forms of marginalization by cultural, post-colonial socio-economic or political processes, and globalization. The symbolism is unmistakable, for the moon is the guardian of women too and women's life-giving energies are associated with the moon's cycle. Globalization and post-independence policies have disempowered Nigerian women in new ways. African women writers, for instance, have contributed significantly to the interrogation of women's location in national and gender discourses and politics.