A Comparative Study of Initiation and Identity

This study is a comparative analysis of initiation and the identity of the African woman as portrayed in the two novels, The River Between and Possessing the Secret of Joy by Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Alice Walker respectively. These two authors play out clitoridectomy as a rite of transition and incorporation of the African woman in African society. However, the contextual backgrounds that inform the setting upon which Ngugi and Walker narrate on circumcision of women leads to different conclusions about the practice. Ngugi, writes from the Kikuyu community in Kenya depicts the initiation of women through clitoridectomy as the defining moment of an African womans’s identity. Kikuyu society is in the midst of colonial transition Christian missionaries in their proselytizing activities are dead set against the practice of circumcision of women as barbaric and inhuman.