On the 24th of February 2002, in Maison de France, Lagos, Omolara Ogundipe Leslie told those present at the literary activity:
’The Book’ is essential to any life worth living. I can’t imagine a happy life without books! Many young writers are talented but there are no publishers. Many people are publishing themselves but that is not the best….
Dick Abel once described the role of ‘the publisher’ as instrumental in the maintenance of the received cultural tradition. For him, book publishers have done much more than to maintain the standard texts of culture. They add intellectual and cultural value to the works they publish. Published works pass on culture: specific ways of life, beliefs and ideals of particular groups of people. In a broader sense, they also pass on 'works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity.'1 In pinpointing what to publish, publishers have their varied and different sets of criteria, focus and interests and it is in these interests that women through the ages have felt very strongly that they have been silenced, ignored and marginalized. This is why we still have Conferences and Book Fairs with the theme: “Women Empowerment through Publishing.”2
Different publishers look out for different things. For Blackwell Publishing, Publishing is about making connections. They are convinced that Knowledge is not constrained by national or linguistic boundaries. They go farther to state on their web site the four corner stones of their commitment to develop books for students which take account of the latest research in addition to making their journals as accessible as possible:
* Setting the highest standards of intellectual rigour
* Promoting internationalism
* Building strong relationships
* Expanding readership
They are ready to do all of the above, so long as a prospective writer (of textbooks in this case) gives them the kind of books they want. Other publishers like Lee and Low Books, who publish Multicultural Literature for children, would advise that the first step to getting published - besides writing a story - is research. One must find out whether or not one’s story is right for a publisher or vice versa (i.e. whether or not a publisher is right for one’s story). Practically all publishers coincide in looking out for the ‘saleability’ of any book in question.
Empowerment, which simply means “to authorize, to allow, to sanction” or “to give (someone) the power or legal right to do something” 3 or “to give somebody the power or authority to act”4 is understood in different ways by different people. The Women’s University (Mumbai) and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (Delhi) for instance, define empowerment as a word used to refer to:
an environment that enables women to take control over material assets, intellectual resources and ideological choices.
A lot of ground still needs to be covered in these different areas but some ground has been gained especially in reference to women owning assets. Tunde Okoli, on the other hand, sounds a bit exasperated with the words: ‘empowerment’, ‘liberation’ when he says in his article, “Empowering the Women Through Information” that it is only the oppressed that should ask for liberation and empowerment. For him, when one talks of liberation or empowerment, there must be a sense of slavery. He goes on to affirm:
All along in the history of mankind, what has been missing is determination on the part of the female folks…but the women shied away from the responsibility. While their male counterparts picked up nomination forms for as much as N5 million, the same forms were made available to women free. In their attempt at finding the much talked about economic/political empowerment, women don't seem to recognize the potential in their number.5
One cannot dwell extensively on the issues raised by Mr. Okoli because our focus is on empowerment through publishing but it is interesting to see the different perceptions of empowerment and its use or misuse. I think the word “empowerment” - especially with reference to women’s writing - is a misnomer. Notice that all the definitions of empowerment given above, give the impression of some passivity on the part of the “subject”. If empowerment were lacking for women it would imply that women lacked the ‘power’, the ‘legal right’ to publish and this is not the case. We have come a long way since the Women’s Liberation Movements of the 60s and 70s and besides, many male writers in Nigeria - even if not as many - also face the same problems women face when it comes to getting publishers to set their works to print. The main point, to my mind, is to empower our cultural heritage even more by helping our publishers “see”; to open up new horizons for them to be able to perceive the wealth they are leaving out thereby impoverishing humanity when they narrow-mindedly relegate books written by women to their dust covered manuscript shelves.
With reference to “the book” and “publishers”, women have had a lot to complain about. There is the tendency to see a lack of women in publishing (I say a lack of women because the problem is not that women are not present!) precisely when the publisher as “gatekeeper” and disseminator of ideas was and remains part of an industry dominated by men. The consequence is what we still have: fewer women are published. I have never heard of “Men Empowerment through Publishing” precisely because millions of men have already been empowered through publishing! The question then is why is this so? Why did the organizers of the 2003 Nigerian Book Fair choose the theme: “Women Empowerment through Publishing”? It is because there is a problem. In the interview Dayo Alabi (who chaired the organizing of this Book Fair) granted the Vanguard on the 6th of February 2003 he said:
This year we are looking at what we believe is current. All over the world women believe that they are marginalized, rightly or wrongly, so we are saying how can publishing empower women, how can publishing enhance the visibility of women ….
There are so many barriers women come up against when they are serious about publishing their works, academic or creative. This essay will consider these barriers and see how women have tried to remove or get around them. It will then explore women’s words worth in order to consider and arrive at and ideas that would help make for the authentic empowerment of women and society through publishing.
Jane Rogers, a British writer who was in Nigeria in 2001 for the 3rd International Women Writers’ Forum in Abuja, mentioned some of these barriers. The very first is that Literature is still considered a preserve of men.6 She pointed out that in Britain, this discrimination or barrier rears its head in very subtle ways. The prestigious Booker Prize, for instance. Taking a look at the shortlist, one notices an almost fixed kind of pattern. Every year, there are more men than women on the shortlist of six. In 2001 two women made it to the short list; often there is only one. Secondly, from 1901 when the Nobel Prize for Literature was instituted till 1997, only nine (9) women have won the prestigious prize. Women publish more novels than men but men are taken more seriously. Another barrier is the fact that going through anthologies of new writing like GRANTA magazine, many more male contributors are published than the female. Bringing this nearer home, Mabel Segun, tells of how a contribution on her work was needed for the book “Perspectives on Nigerian Literature.” She asked a male writer to help out but he told her “…get one of the women to write it…” Then Mabel Segun wondered (in her address on the subject of “Pioneer Women Writers”): “since when had literary criticism been sexually polarized?” So the point is made in very subtle ways that women writers are a kind of second class citizens who should be kept together, - out of the mainstream - to read and make critical analyses of their own works. In addition, if one were to look at review space on the pages of books, novels by men get better coverage. Also in Britain, Jane went on to say, Buchi Emecheta is the only well known Nigerian Woman Writer; of the five pioneer women writers, only the book of one of them - Flora Nwapa - is available for sale off-the-shelf; some of the others have to be specially ordered and the majority are not available at all! She looked through different current anthologies of African writers and not one contained a story by a Nigerian woman. The only place a Nigerian woman is represented is in an anthology specifically dedicated to women’s writing (“Opening Spaces”, in the Heinemann African Writers Series, edited by Yvonne Vera). These barriers could very well be classified: ‘man-made’ barriers!
The fact of relegating women writers to the background has been so for centuries. There was a very successful woman playwright called Aphra Behn (c. 1640-1689) who had lived and produced plays during Shakespeare's time but we do not hear much about her. One of her plays is “The Lucky Chance” (1686) which was acted and made into a film in 1984 by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Behn’s plays often have a keen awareness of the ways in which women are treated as commodities: “When a Lady is proposed to you for a Wife, you never ask, how fair, discreet, or virtuous she is; but what’s her Fortune—which if but small, you cry—She will not do my business—and basely leave her, tho’ she languish for you.”7 Her novel “Oroonoko” or “The Royal Slave” (c. 1688), the story of an African prince sold into slavery in Suriname, influenced the development of the English novel and is important for several reasons: it introduced the figure of the noble savage, later developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; foreshadowed later novels on the anti-colonial theme and pioneered the effort to depict a realistic background in the novel. Some critics consider it the first English philosophical novel. “Oroonoko” even formed the basis of a tragedy of the same name written by the English dramatist Thomas Southerne, produced in 1695. As far as one can see, no one studies Aphra Behn’s works as part of the school curriculum as much as Shakespeare is. Even the simple task of flipping through the booklist of a Publishing house, re-affirms this unhealthy bias. In the David Campbell list of ‘Everyman’s Library’ there are a hundred and twenty five (125) titles of which; guess how many authors are women: Fifteen! (15!) including George Eliot!
Yet other reasons why women’s works have been excluded from “our published heritage” some say, is the ‘radical’ nature of women’s subject matter (we will get back to this point later) and that women write differently:
It is a belief, widely entertained, that there is a great difference in the mental constitution of the two sexes, just as there is in their physical conformation. The power and susceptibilities of women are as noble as those of men, but they are thought to be different and, in particular, it is considered that they have not the same power of intense labour as men are endowed with. 8
Given these biases especially that stated in the last phrase of the above quotation, is there any wonder why that group of society still feels silenced and marginalized? How then have women reacted?
Women have tried to get round these barriers in different ways and one of the ways is that ‘the empire wrote back’ and published. Those who set up presses like (Carmen Callil who set up the “Virago” Press) and other publishing houses like the “Women’s Press”, did so in order to actively promote women's writing, whether or not it was feminist. For Sophie Contento, it was for these presses to challenge the patriarchal ideology of the publishing industry:
“whereas formerly those who produced images that defined women through publishing were men, the raised awareness of the feminist ideology allowed for true representation.”
However, one wonders whether the feminist ideology really allowed for “true representation” because not all women agree that they were truly represented nor did all admit that they had the Women Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1960s and70s and feminism as their principal motivation. Katherine Frank, a feminist scholar, once considered Nwapa a ‘radical feminist’. What was Nwapa’s reaction? In December 1991, she clarified:
I don't think I'm a radical feminist, I don't even accept that I'm a feminist. I accept that I'm an ordinary woman who is writing about what she knows. 9
It is common to find that African female writers are not really interested in being called feminists and as Arndt rightly noted, it is mainly due to their perception of (Western) feminism, which they equate with radical feminism and therefore with:
hatred of men, ... non-acceptance of African traditions, the fundamental rejection of marriage and motherhood, the favouring of lesbian love and the endeavour to transform the relationship of the genders into its opposite. (ibid)
These, for the African woman, do not improve but rather worsen matters. Mabel Segun's position when compared with Nwapa’s, tends to be on the other extreme of the continuum. She wonders why men should always be painted black:
… as if there are no wicked women in the world: there are, there are! And I don't see why if I write about good women, I can't write about others who are wicked. 10
She argues that if women are to be ‘promoted’, they need to be told not to do "some of the bad things they are doing..."
Women just sit back and want you to hand them things on a silver platter. I don't believe in that. If that is feminism, never for me… talk is not what is going to improve the society; it is example... (ibid)
African female writers are therefore more interested in integration, i.e. a working together of both genders, rather than the exclusivist stand, that Western feminism seems to advocate. In addition, they want the positive values of the African way of life to be maintained, as seen in Mabel Segun's position. (Uzoigwe, V. 2001) However, one cannot but acknowledge the fact that these presses played an important role in a raising of awareness of these barriers.
Cadman, Chester & Pivot are others who hold fast to the belief that the role of ‘women only’ presses was instrumental in showing that what was being produced was good writing and not just 'feminist writing':
It has only been with the rise of publishers run by women committed to promoting the interests of women both culturally and politically that we have seen the enormous output of books concerned with women... 11
To a large extent, this is true but some have questioned the need for ‘women only’ presses when the industry does not see ‘men only’ presses. Why therefore, should their writing be given the definition of 'women's writing' and not simply writing? They ask. Should writing not be genderless like Mabel Segun opined? This trying to relegate women’s writing to a ‘genre’ or a branch of its own may sound exciting but on the other hand, some make the point that then it is a group that should be studied separately because it is different and does not qualify to be part of humanity’s published heritage that flows along mainstream publishing.
This forms part of the controversy that was at its peak in 1996 when a very lucrative literary prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction, was set up in Britain. It is a prize that can be won by women only. For the Booker prize set up in 1968, the overall winner goes away with Twenty- One Thousand Pounds but the amount is more for the Orange Prize for Fiction: Thirty Thousand Pounds! Why was this done? The same reason that the presses were founded: even after twenty-eight years, although published, women are still being excluded from recognition by the “male literary establishment” (Sarah Ridgard). Ridgard explains the argument for the launching of the Orange Prize:
The argument for the launch was that despite the majority of novels being written and read by women, a disproportionately small number get shortlisted or reach the literary review pages. Indeed
the 1991 Booker Prize was cited as the main reason why the prize was launched when no women reached the shortlist. There appeared to be a distinct bias, which if it had gone the other way - an all female shortlist for the Booker - there would have been an outcry. Therefore the prize aimed to redress the imbalance by raising the profile of these writers and their fiction. 12
(Ben Okri won the Booker Prize this same year with his “The Famished Road.”) Some are of the opinion that it is not fair to have a prize open only to women, and wonder what women would say if there was a men-only prize. Others think it is separatist, and does not really serve to better women writers and how they are perceived. It is significant then that Nadine Gordimer, the 1991 Nobel Prize winner, rejected the 1998 candidacy for the Orange Award because it was restricted to women writers. People think the award marginalizes women's writing by setting it apart and making a public point that women's writing is different in some way, and is not the stuff of good literature; in effect, that women writers need a separate prize. This is almost like the case of shooting one in the leg. Regardless of this point, it is not hard to recognize that women writers have encountered more difficulty in getting published and receiving due recognition than other male writers within the mainstream. Therefore the Orange prize raises very important issues about women's writing. In line with Gordimer’s reaction, the 1984 Booker Prize Winner, Anita Brookner affirmed:
I'm against positive discrimination. If women want equality, which they do, and which they have largely achieved, they shouldn't ask for separate treatment. Publishing is an open forum. If a book is good, it will get published. If it is good it will get reviewed.
The controversy is still on and today, there are most surely the most varied opinions but what makes a literary work good enough to be published? Here also, controversy reigns supreme but the idea is to achieve some understanding. What really makes a book good enough to form part of the “received cultural tradition that publishers are instrumental in maintaining” and passing on? Whenever this question arises, many writers ask: Who sets the standards? Who decides what is good or what is bad? These are some of those same old rhetorical questions that lead no-where or at the best, to dead-ends; they neither help nor push one towards achieving a better understanding. One would rather ask the question: what is more practical, what is more useful? It is certainly more rewarding listen to what the experts and fellow writers think make for better writing, than remain in useless rhetorical questions that leaves one more ignorant than before. What are some of the qualities that memorable literary works contain? No one knows it all - that is obvious. Controversies are just to air opinions (both the informed kind of opinion and the uninformed kind) and more often than not, they lead no farther. But study does. Taking a closer look at works that have become classics, one can tease out some characteristics they share. Characteristics that make them win awards or survive for centuries. Before pointing out these qualities however, we will consider what some writers think good writing should not be.
Linda Grant for example does not want to:
read any more books about young women coming to London and getting anorexia or copping off in Clapham …depressing experiences.
(Linda Grant, author)
She thinks these are those “women’s topics” trivial issues that will not interest men or even other women. Virginia Woolf on the other hand, observes that women writers would eventually “look beyond the personal and political relationships to the wider questions which the poet tries to solve – our destiny and the meaning of life”13. For writer, Lesley Chamberlain, the difficulty for women writing today lies in the nature of female characters. "Women need to write about women whose horizons and experience are wide"14. This is the point. Mrs. Mobolaji Adenubi has pointed out time without number, stressing the fact that society needs role models in the kind of women who have crashed through the glass ceilings, into a world believed to be the preserve for men only. Novels that have women of character, not simple commodities, blown around by any wind whatsoever. It is sad to read what Sarah Ridgard says in a write up:
One only has to pick up the Bookseller at random to read "the publishing schedules are filling up with bright bubbly twentysomething women writing about bright bubbly twentysomething heroines, all working as PR assistants, getting plenty of sex and looking for Mr. Right"
It is a saturation of so many topics like this that makes many people conclude that women do not write the stuff of good literature. This could be said of a good number of writers both male and female. However, it is also true that some women writers have created heroines that really can be considered role models.
One of the arguments to date about the notion of good literature is the “Universality of human experience” and for Joseph Brodsky, a writer,
it is a touch of the metaphysical thought that lifts fiction or verse into literature.
Apart from the kind of heroines created in novels, there are also many women writers who have proved their ability to combine the metaphysical that Brodsky talks about, and Virginia Woolf’s “wider questions which the Poet tries to solve”. Nadine Gordimer and Karen King-Aribisala are two writers that readily come to mind.
Gordimer’s characters define her moral position most clearly: i.e. that humanity and apartheid cannot co-exist. Inevitably, one must destroy the other. One of her books, “Burger’s Daughter” (1979) was banned in South Africa after the Soweto uprising. She had many reviewers to review her many works and most laud her “precise ear for spoken language that lent great authenticity to her dialogue”, “a sensitivity to the rhythm and texture of the written word that gave her prose the power of poetry”, “a keen eye that made her a tireless observer”, “an even keener sense of social satire … and strong feeling of moral purpose, composed in equal parts of her indignation at the share injustice of South Africa’s entrenched racial oppression and of her commitment to speak the truth as she saw it.” 15 In a nutshell, she deals largely with the consequences of apartheid on the lives of men and women, black and white, and the distortions it (i.e. Apartheid) produces in their lives. Her works must have also contributed their quota in helping to pull down Apartheid in South Africa.
King-Aribisala is another writer who has sought to address wider questions. In her novel, “Kicking Tongues”, she tries and succeeds in pointing out the multi-faceted roots of the problems Nigeria has faced and still faces as a Nation.16 She does this in the most innovative way: a transposition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. She even experiments further: in the novel, you find poems, a play, and many short stories in her attempt to break down the barriers of confinement to just one genre at a particular point in time. Though the publishers found the original too long, they still wanted it published so they suggested what was to be done. If the story and manner of writing it were not that interesting, the work would have been outrightly rejected. Both writers have touched on the “universality of human experience” which (although each story dealt with particular problems of particular societies) will still find many different people identifying with these stories one way or the other.
Tunde Okoli mentioned something, which apart from being very relevant for women writers, introduces us to the last part of this essay. He says:
What the women need is a new direction that will point the way to true economic and/or political empowerment. The new direction should not come in the status of class struggle, which past efforts have taken. It should be channeled towards making the female folks recognize their innate potentials, talents capacity and harnessing these maximally and profitably.
This writer is not really interested in what direction women writing should go because this depends on each individual’s interest and informed choice but yes, attention should be paid to the last phrase:
“recognize their innate potentials, talent capacity and harnessing these maximally and profitably.”
This happens to be important because at times, women harness to destroy or to lose already gained ground wittingly or unwittingly. There are innate qualities that women are blessed with and these belong to women and to women alone. If women failed to give these qualities to society, impoverished she remains forever. No other group of creatures - men included - can make up for its lack in society. To get to these innate qualities, we will need to go through three stages.
The first is the anthropological level. Here, the distinction man, woman is indifferent. Both are equally the same in the sense that both are individuals that can make their own decisions. But there are obvious differences. To get to these and to pick out what women can give that men cannot, i.e. those topics that should form part of our cultural heritage that only women can give, one needs to zero in on what it means to be a woman. (in relation to what it means to be a man) Only then can one decide whether the problem lies in “empowering women” in a generic way by just talking about it and doing nothing afterwards or through enabling the environment by enabling some individuals’ minds to expand somewhat to also encompass women’s writing.
‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ are complementary and this complementarity is what enables the human specie. Humanity needs two complementary sexes. In other words, with one man and one woman, we have humanity. Two men or two women do not make up humanity; they are at best two things who after a few years die and rot! The human person is two complementary and absolutely necessary beings that are needed for humanity to exist and as Juan Perez Lopez said way back in 1995: “the presence of the woman in society is essential for social equilibrium.” 17 He arrived at this conclusion after a deep and extensive study going through the biological, psychological and anthropological levels. In the biological level, the differences are obvious: male – female: superficial level. Going deeper into the next plane, is the psychological: here we get “the masculine” and “the feminine”. There is something which is masculine and that which is feminine and in addition both are persons and “persons are spiritual beings capable of knowing and loving.” (Aristotle) This is why on the anthropological level one cannot talk about differences between man and woman but rather of equality. Both are persons and as such, there can be no greater equality of being though each person is one, distinct, unique and irrepeatable. But when it comes to “innate capacities”, women carry the day. Imagine these two scenes:
a) a Child comes in late: Father in a fury; only a mother’s eyes can see that the boy must have had a hard time as she notices the tears hidden behind the lowered eyes;
b) a baby cries: the father rocks ad moves him around him unsuccessfully; the mother comes, takes a look at the child, dips a finger in water and drops it into the tiny mouth and the crying ceases. It just comes natural to women.
An important consequence of this is that “some people” are ‘women’ because they are of the feminine gender who in coming into being (when they are born) have come into being as female. This is where the radical difference lies in being a ‘feminine person’. Logically it has consequences in the psychological and biological spheres but the deepest cause is in ‘feminity’ in being feminine. This consequence is of more importance for women than for men. Men move within more superficial levels while the deep, more profound, affect women more directly. Women are more hooked on experimental knowledge and this is shown in making decisions. The masculine can generate a lot of alternatives and the feminine evaluates these marvelously. Men tend to escape (responsibility) upwards and women have their feet on the ground. These are an anthropologist’s conclusions not mine; this is where and why there exists a complimentarity and for that equilibrium to be maintained, both have to be paid equal attention. This is what many publishers have failed to observe and act upon and this is why we have a one-sided heritage that needs some serious balancing out.
There is so much women can do and for this writer, the greatest, which belongs almost exclusively to the woman, is to bring humanity back to human beings; back to the world. It is true that any writer can write whatsoever s/he pleases, about whomsoever s/he pleases, howsoever s/he pleases and whensoever s/he pleases but great works of Literature have always tried to bring out the best in human beings. “True freedom is the ability to control that freedom, to exercise it with responsibility. Freedom has a price...” (Karen King-Aribisala in her presentation at the writers’ workshop organized by the British Council, Lagos, May 7th2003.)
The writer who makes me sympathize with his presentations with the whole of my being is more estimable than the writer who calls forth and appeals to a part…; and again, he who makes me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, raises me into the universal man. Now this is Defoe’s excellence. You become a man while you read. 18
So said Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), about Daniel Defeo’s “Robinson Crusoe.” And nowadays, have you noticed the resurgence of the classics? Shakespeare’s classics many of which have now been made into films; Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” and so very many others after a century of bitter violence in a world filled with books on war and violence written by “men”? It seems a more humane kind of writing is being sought and women are better positioned to give this, above all for their care for details and that quality that in most women is almost second nature: sympathy, empathy.
CONCLUSION
Having considered:
- the barriers women face when it comes to getting their works published in the mainstream male-dominated publishing industry;
- how women have tried getting around these barriers by setting up women presses and literary prizes, (a phenomenon some consider have brought women more disadvantages than advantages) and
- a few qualities of good literary works (when we considered the opinion of some literary experts both living and dead)
- we finally made a case for the ‘wordsworth’ of women’s literary works: the innate qualities that make them at one and the same time different and indispensable in bringing humanity back to an almost inhumane planet.
The fault that has made women an under-published group is a faulted-coin. The first side of the coin has a lot to do with women. It is high time women wrote less “to right self” and to rather concentrate more in “righting society”. This is how (with Gordimer and many other women writers) the best case can be made for women’s ‘wordsworth’. The other side of the faulted-coin lies heavy on publishers. It is high time publishers especially those run by men, widened a bit their scope and horizons so that they may not be cursed by posterity for leaving out a most important part of humanity’s literary heritage.
WORKS CITED
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