Writing women's rites: Excision in experiential African literature

This article examines "excision" (a.k.a. "female circumcision," Female Genital Mutilation [FGM] or, more recently, Female Genital Cutting [FGC]) in African Women's first-person accounts. While considering the shift from female third-person narratives to "experiential" texts, the article also outlines three steps-(1) in-passing; (2) auto(-) biography; and (3) suturing-in delineating the herstory of the representation of excision in postcolonial African literature, which in turn, contributes to the general shift in the literary text from rite to mutilation so that women's rites now clash with human rights. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.