Source of All Evil: African Proverbs and Sayings on Women

by Mineke Schipper

Great deeds, works of literature, chronicles of history-none of these reveals as much about a culture as its proverbs. Musical, direct, and truth-telling, proverbs express a way of seeing life. They sound the many and different voices of a people, revealing at the same time the uniqueness of a culture and its commonality with other cultures across the world and throughout history. In Africa, proverbs are the "cream of language," the panache of a rich and enduring oral tradition. And usually they have been made by men. As the men of Rwanda say, "No woman is called upon to speak...." It is scarcely surprising, then, that women appear in so many African proverbs as devils or burdens. Wives seem at best stupid or quarrelsome, at worst treacherous-though the Basari of Togo admit that "a stupid wife is better than a ruined house." In this completely unique and fascinating book, Mineke Schipper, internationally recognized authority on Third World literature, has assembled hundreds of proverbs and sayings on women, in almost eighty African languages, from the wise to the wisecracking, from the odd to the outrageous. The great and varied chorus seems at times alien but more often strangely familiar.

107 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1991

About the author

Mineke Schipper is a Dutch author of non-fiction and fiction. As a scholar she is best known for her work on comparative literature mythologies and intercultural studies.

Mineke Schipper studied French and Philosophy at Amsterdam Free University and Literary Theory, followed by Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Utrecht. She started her career teaching French and African Literature at the Université Libre du Congo (between 1964 and 1972). She received her PhD in Amsterdam in 1973, writing the first thesis in the Netherlands on African literature) and dedicated herself to developing the field of intercultural literary studies. In 1988 she became the first Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies in the Netherlands, at the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1993 she moved to Leiden University where she played a dynamic role in building intercultural bridges in researching and lecturing comparative literature in a global context.

In 1999 she received an honorary doctorate from Chengdu University (Sichuan Province) in China. Since 2000 she has been regularly invited by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) where she collaborates with colleagues on projects about epics and creation myths. In December 2008 she gave her farewell address at the University of Leiden.

Mineke Schipper lives in Amsterdam.

Reviews

[CORNELIUS RONO · Rating 5 out of 5]

To real timeline its quite interesting to learn more and to the society at large