Lahoucine Ouzgane & Onookome Okome 
Men in African Film and Fiction [PDF ebook] 

Fills a gap in the international literature by offering new insights into the heterogeneous ways in which African men are performing, negotiating and experiencing masculinity.


Through their analysis of the depictions in film and literature of masculinities in colonial, independent and post-independent Africa, the contributors open some key African texts to a more obviously politicized set of meanings.

Collectively, the essays provide space for rethinking current theory on gender and masculinity:

– how only some of the most popular theories in masculinity studies in the West hold true in African contexts;

– how Western masculinities react with indigenous masculinities on the continent;

– how masculinity and femininity in Africa seem to reside more on a continuum of cultural practices than on absolutely opposite planes;

– andhow generation often functions as a more potent metaphor than gender.


Lahoucine Ouzgane is Associate Professor of English & Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

Table of Content

Introduction Part I MAN & NATION IN AFRICA – Lahoucine Ouzgane

The anxious phallus: the iconography of impotence in
Quartier Mozart &
Clando – Jane Bryce

The homoerotics of nationalism: white male-on-male rape & the ‘Coloured’ subject in Mark Behr’s
The Smell of Apples – Lindsey Michael Banco

‘Wild men’ & emergent masculinities in post-colonial Kenyan popular fiction – Tom Odhiambo

The anonymity of manhood: unmasking shadow selves in Assia Djebar’s
Ombre sultane – Najat Rahman

The rape continuum: masculinities in the works of Nawal El Saadawi & Tahar Ben Jelloun PART II ALTERNATIVE MASCULINITIES – Lahoucine Ouzgane

‘Coming unstuck’: masculine identities in post-independence Zimbabwean fiction – Patricia Alden

Imported alternatives: changing Shona masculinities in
Flame &
Yellow Card – Katrina Daly Thompson

Ngugi wa Thiong’o & the crisis of Kenyan masculinity – Andrew Hammond

Father Africa: counter-narratives of masculinity in Ousmane Sembene’s
Faat Kiné &
Moolaadé – Tarshia L. Stanley

The eternal other: authority of deficit masculinity in Asian-African literature – Justus K. Siboe Makokha

Recent trends in the treatment of homosexualities in literature & film by African artists – Marc Epprecht

Re-membering the last king of Dahomey: postcolonial masculinities & diasporic desires – Wendy Knepper