The Portrayal of Gender in Kofi Nyaku’s Amedzro Etɔ̃lia: A Feminist Approach

Abstract

Literature is usually reflective of the ideologies and general worldviews of the societies from which it originates. Among the critical issues that are raised in many literary works are issues pertaining to gender and power relations. Some literary works originating from the African context have served as fertile grounds for gender stereotyping and its attendant asymmetric power distribution. In spite of the abundance of such literary works, those written in colonial languages tend to receive more scholarly attention than those written in indigenous African languages. The present study is a feminist criticism of a masterpiece originating from the Ewe culture of Ghana and Togo and written in Ewe, a Kwa language spoken in parts of West Africa. The study explores the author’s portrayal of gender and the extent to which his work reproduces asymmetric power relations based on gender. The analysis shows that the author reproduces gender stereotypes through the foregrounding of male characters, asymmetric distribution of wealth, gendered assignment of agency, and gendered assignment of occupations.