How have the everyday practices of parenting been shaped by patriarchy and coloniality? What are the transformative potentials of feminist parenting? In Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond, an anthology edited by Rama Salla Dieng and Andrea O’Reilly published in 2020 by Demeter Press, 28 writers from Africa, its diaspora, and around the world share reflect on these questions from their own parenting experiences and feminist activism. Collectively, the aim of the book is to explore the diversity of feminist parenting practices and the challenges this involves in wide range of social, economic, cultural, and religious contexts. Less concerned with critiquing the assumptions that underpin western feminist assumptions about parenting than with proliferating alternative accounts of the joys and struggles of feminist parenting, the book offers a powerful set of narratives and reflections on inter-generational care, structural violence, advocacy and activism, social reproduction, and the gendered politics of knowledge.
In this episode of New Books in Anthropology, editor Rama Salla Dieng joins host Jacob Doherty to discuss the genealogies of African feminisms that inform the anthology, the role of first-person narrative in producing and disseminating feminist theory, and how the book’s focus on parenting sets it apart from other work on gender in Africa. Three contributors to the anthology – Sadaf Kahn, Francoise Moudouthe, and Cheikh ‘Keyti’ Séne also join the episode to discuss their contributions.
Rama Salla Dieng is a Lecturer in African Studies and International Development and Programme Director of the MSc Africa and International Development at the University of Edinburgh.
Sadaf Kahn is a journalist and activist in Pakistan and cofounder Media Matters, of an organization that works on research and policy advocacy for media and digital rights.
Francoise Moudouthe is a pan-African feminist with roots in Cameroon and the founder of the online feminist platform Eyala.
Cheikh ‘Keyti’ Séne is a Senegalese musician and founder of the online youth news and hip hop forum Journal Rappé.
Jacob Doherty is a lecturer in the Anthropology of Development at the University of Edinburgh.
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