Description: Examining narratives from a wide variety of countries and traditions in francophone Africa and the Caribbean, Renee Larrier argues that women writers reappropriate their specific oral tradition by creating woman-centered/woman-narrated texts. Female characters telling their own stories subvert stereotypes found in literature and popular culture.

Larrier discusses the inscription of women's voices on sites as varied as pot lids, wall paintings, and cloth before focusing on prose works from Cameroon, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Mali, Martinique, and Senegal. In so doing, she reconnects the authors of Africa and the diaspora who articulate women's perspectives and empower their communities.

A significant comparative study (focusing on works by Werewere Liking, Marie-Jose Hourantier, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Mariama Ba, Michele Maillet, Calixthe Beyala, Marie Chauvet, Aoua Keita, and Dany Bebel-Gisler), Francophone Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean marks a major contribution to an exiting field of inquiry.

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