Peeking behind the veil: Migratory women in Africa in Nuruddin Farah's "From a crooked Rib" (1970), "A naked needle" (1976) and "Knots" (2007), and Nadine Gordimer's "The pickup" (2001)

Abstract

The experience of women moving across national frontiers and cultural, ethnic and religious divides in Africa is a major topic in Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib (1970), A Naked Needle (1976) and Knots (2007), and Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup (2001). In From a Crooked Rib and Knots, Nuruddin Farah presents the dilemmas faced by the protagonists – Ebla in From a Crooked Rib and Cambara in Knots (2007) – as they attempt to move back into Somalia in an effort to integrate into a society that is fractured by clan warfare, gender discrimination, religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatred. These characterisations are thrown into sharp relief by those of Nancy in Nuruddin Farah’s A Naked Needle, and of Julie Summers in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup who, departing from England and South Africa respectively, achieve controversially mixed success at crossing the cultural and religious divides. This study sets out to identify the factors that impede the integration of women migrants in Africa as depicted in the novels of these two African writers, and to demonstrate how these issues are treated aesthetically in the fictionalisations.