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Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women's Writing. Yvonne Vera, ed. Portsmouth, N.H. / Harare, Zimbabwe. Heinemann/Baobab. 1999. vi + 186 pages. $13.95. ISBN 0-435-910-8.
In this anthology of short stories, Yvonne Vera proves herself to be a writer's writer, a visionary whose understanding of continental African women's concerns, commonalities, and differences has the power to inspire the most disinterested of readers. Her fourth novel, Butterfly Burning (1998; see WLT 74:1, p. 230), was described as "richly poetic while also brutally realistic." In the volume at hand, the masterful storyteller demonstrates a keen eye for masterful stories.
Vera introduces the volume as a celebration of recent writing from women in Africa. She explains that women writers are "no longer writing to empire as our early writers did." Instead, "a variety of themes and preoccupations emerge, each engaged through the prism of a combined womanhood." While the volume holds together well as total presentation, there are remarkable differences in the stories and voices that emerge. The one constant is the fact that unique female spaces - language, images, and metaphors - open with the telling of each tale. The total effect of the collection is...