African Women’s Developed Fund and Femrite gathered women from different parts of the world for a non-fiction workshop here in Entebbe (Uganda). The workshop is still on. I have been following the conversations on twitter via #AWW14 and they have ranged from language in writing to hair to feminism to marketing one’s work to bleaching and much more.

This has also meant new reading material for me from some of the participants in this workshop. Here is what I have been reading:

1. Where are the women in African non fiction by Minna Salami @MsAfropolitan

Unlike fiction writing, where women writers are doing well, gender inequality in the African non-fiction literary scene remains an unambiguous and crippling problem. Sure, writers like Dambisa Moyo, Noo Saro-Wiwa, Pumla Dineo-Gqola and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are contributing with compelling and heated investigations of African matters, but the non-fiction genre generally suffers from a lack of writing by African women.

This is because, like women everywhere, African women are systematically discouraged from probing intellectual matters.

2. To girls whose thighs touch…by Amina Doherty @sheroxlox

I realised that this ‘fat shaming’ isn’t just something that happens in the amorphous “media” that we tend to blame for everything, but often in our own homes, amongst our families and in our communities. Fat shaming transcends cultures and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter if you are African, Caribbean, Asian or American — We’ve all had them – the aunties that remind us that we (big women) will never find husbands unless we loose some weight (eiiiiiiii!!). And it is by no means just our aunties alone. Being fat it seems invites anyone and everyone into our own personal space.

3. Girl Power, Rah Rah – Nah by Olu Timehin @TheLoulette

My (and most other feminists’) feminism isn’t anti-man, man-hating, militant rampaging. It’s not about men. It’s about systems of oppression and the usually but not exclusively male-run, male-upheld institutions that promote and perpetuate them. It’s about patriarchy, about kyriarchy, about the dehumanization of women and men due to subjugation, abuse of power and denial of rights

4. My First Time: Stories of first time experiences from women like you.

Last week on Twitter, My First Time sent out an invitation to submit your first time hair experiences and your first time experiences with skin lightening creams or the first time you became aware of being dark or light-skinned.

Send your experiences to: 1sttimewritingproject2010@gmail.com

5. Stop Telling Women to Smile, an art series by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, that attempts to address gender based street harassment by placing drawn portraits of women, composed with captions that speak directly to offenders, outside in public spaces. 

6. Take a Photograph (a short story) by Jen Thorpe

‘He did a bad thing Jonathan. He tried to protect the world he loved, but he tried to protect it in the wrong way.’ And that was all she had had to say. And I guess I didn’t want it to be worse than that – when you’re a laaitie like I was there is so much that you can imagine that would be bad and I didn’t want to confirm my worst suspicions.

7. Lastly, have you read my short story, Fringes on the Storymoja blog?

Then the man whose disappearance in her life had made her eyes dull with alcohol summoned us and my mother was giddy and conscious about her neck. He was no longer “that man” but “your father”.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I have.

Have a lovely week!

7/7 is Sooo Many Stories’ way of helping you beat the Monday blues. 7 things that are making me happy in the literary world that will make you happy too!