SOURCE: “Metafiction, Autobiography, and Self-Inscription,” in Womanism and African Consciousness, Africa World Press, 1997, pp. 167-79.

In the following excerpt, Kolawole discusses Emecheta's fictional use of autobiography in Second-Class Citizen to illustrate the reality of African women. “The intersection of personal problems, communal dilemmas, ethnicity, race, class, and gender problems,” writes Kolawole, “is remarkably underscored in this novel.”

Self-inscription and the Intersection of Gender and Culture

Metafiction has become popular with women writers because it highlights the struggles and the painful process of recreating oneself. The struggle to be a writer carries a special burden for the African woman who tries to negotiate a space in a hostile environment as she tries to tread on a male domain (modern literature has been a male domain for a long time). Nonetheless metafiction is a popular tool of women's self-expression. Gayle Greene explains this:

It is a powerful tool of feminist...