A History of Africana Women's Literature contains a selection of essays  by notable Feminist/Womanist scholars  exploring the lives of  Black  women in different socio-cultural, linguistic and religious milieux, using a cross-disciplinary perspective.  The book offers  portraits of women actually seen to move beyond mere socio-gender protests against marginalization and voicelessness to a much-desired phase of dynamic socio-political / intellectual activism and self-actualization -- leading to a recovery and an effective use of the female voice.  Fictive or real, women of this anthology all have a history of activism that can be traced  even to pre-colonial Africa and its orality.

This  essay collection further achieves continuity by connecting  women from disparate geo-linguistic and cultural spaces visibly engaged in  identical gender struggles.  The essays provide deep insights into the strategies these women adopt to combat and demolish the male-erected architectural enclosures of exclusion.  This anthology also acknowledges the contributions of men, termed “gynandristsâ€�  who have  with empathy spoken for women long before women could themselves do so.

Contributors include: Rose Ure Mezu, Gloria Chuku, Ramenga Mtaali Osotsi, Margaret A. Reid, Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure, Najat Rahman, Deirdre Bucher Heistad, M’bar N’Gom, Blessing Diala-Ogamba, Marlene de la Cruz-Guzmn and Lena Ampadu.