African Women Writing Resistance is the first transnational anthology to focus on women's strategies of resistance to the challenges they face in Africa today. The anthology brings together personal narratives, testimony, interviews, short stories, poetry, performance scripts, folktales and lyrics.

The anthology is divided into seven sections, each concentrating on a different area on such issues as intertribal and interethnic conflicts, the degradation of the environment, polygamy, domestic abuse, the controversial traditional practice of female genital cutting, Sharia law, intergenerational tensions, and emigration and exile.

The themes of Engaging With Tradition, Women as Activists and Women's Visions of the Past, Present and Future are insightful and fis being spoken of as the first transnational anthology to focus on women's strategies of resistance in Africa today. It is compelling reading shedding insight into the way that oppression of women can actually be promoted by cultural traditions  ("Interview with Elisabeth Bouanga"), how the scourge of HIV/AIDS is tearing apart families ("Slow Poison"), and how the irony of polygamy both empowers and simultaneously oppresses women ("The Battle of the Words").

What the anthology does, and does effectively, is to open up the sometimes-shady world of African rituals and cultural practices and make this more accessible to the reader. In doing so it serves to educate and inform about what is happening right now, warts and all. Having read the anthology it is hoped that readers will then begin to discuss and dialogue on the issues mentioned and in this way the stories can serve to keep the resistance against the challenges facing women alive and current. These stories can hopefully also lead to more than just resistance, when solutions can be found to change the current status quo.

Contributors include internationally recognized authors and activists such as the late Wangari Maathai and Nawal El Saadawi, as well as a host of vibrant new voices from all over the African continent and from the African diaspora. Interdisciplinary in scope, this collection provides an excellent introduction to contemporary African women's literature and highlights social issues that are particular to Africa, but are also of worldwide concern. It is an essential reference for students of African studies, world literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and women's studies.

Ultimately these are good stories, well edited, that speak of the quest for freedom and independence. They all come from a personal place and will no doubt find resonance with other women, either in a similar position or who will subsequently on reading become more aware of what is happening in the world around them.

Bio Box

> Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez is professor of comparative literature and gender studies at Bard College at Simon's Rock. Pauline Dongala fled Congo-Brazzaville in 2000 and is working on a book about the importance of traditional African healing practices in the contemporary world. Omotayo Jolaosho, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, works on issues of performance, creativity, and community activism in South Africa. Anne Serafin is an independent scholar specializing in African literatures

> Paperback: 376 pages, $26.95, University of Wisconsin Press and Pambazuka Press

> www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/67238. ISBN 9780299236649