Heteronormative Plots and African Feminine Powers in Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1985) is representative of African women’s subordination in “motherhood,” “body movements” (used for communication in the absence of any bridge language), and “marriage” after the arrival of a group of uninvited exclusively white people (albinos) from England in the land of Shavi, a land that was abundantly blessed with a robust matriarchal spirit and self-sustaining powers of African women. This article examines how African women novelists shaped heteronormative plots as a compulsory gendered perspective for articulating the politicized disappearance of African femininity left for organizing African manhood and the masculine principle of the social, political, and heterosexual in a community like Shavi. Extending old Shavian men’s vision, Queen Mother attempts to reawaken European visitors’, such as Flip, Mendoza, Ronje, Andria, and Ista, struggle for a heterosexual role and desire limited to their race so as to save Shavian women from the men’s sexual advances and to assist Shavian women in the preservation of African virtues such as hospitality, cooperation, equality, and love besides protection against Western and young Shavian men’s critical and oppressive attitudes. This article thus contributes to persistent discussions on heterosexuality, the masculinity-femininity division, and heterosexual imaginary.