Women and the Nigeria-Biafra War: Reframing Gender and Conflict in Africa

(Hardback)

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This first comprehensive study of the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970) through the lens of gender explores the valiant and gallant ways women carried out old and new responsibilities in wartime and immediate postwar Nigeria. The book presents women as embodiments of vulnerability and agency, who demonstrated remarkable resilience and initiative, waging war on all fronts in the face of precarious conditions and scarcities, and maximizing opportunities occasioned by the hostilities. Womens experiences are highlighted through critical analyses of oral interviews, memoirs, life histories, fashion and material culture, international legal conventions, music, as well as governmental and non-governmental sources. The book fills the gap in the war scholarship that has minimized womens complex experiences fifty years after the hostilities ended. It highlights the cost of the conflict on Nigerian women, their participation in the hostilities, and their contributions to the survival of families, communities and the country. The chapters present counter-narratives to fictional and nonfictional accounts of the war, especially those written by men, which often peripheralize or stereotypically represent women as passive spectators or helpless victims of the conflict; and also highlight and exaggerate womens moral laxity and sensationalize their marital infidelities.

Reviews

Women and the Nigeria-Biafra War is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on women, gender, and war in African and global history.

Author Bio

Gloria Chuku is professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Sussie U. Aham-Okoro is adjunct lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.