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(More customer reviews)I read Achebe's Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings for a seminar on "African Women" this past semester; and I must say that of all of the books that we had to read (including Oyewumi, Robertson, Romero, Clark, etc.) this was by far my favorite! Achebe challenges readers to rethink the concepts of gender and power as she explores women "kings" in Africa's most populous nation of Nigeria. The histories presented, and the perspective from which they are presented, are extremely insightful and refreshing. In fact, each Igbo woman springs to life in this particularly rich text. As a piece of scholarship, Achebe's book is unsurpassed in its engagement with indigenous meaning, interpretation and understanding. She spent over ten months collecting the oral sources which form the body of the work. Her first chapter, a methodology and "self naming" piece is one of the most brilliant expressions of field research engagement of any scholar--African or otherwise--that I have read. In short, this book has led me to rethink my graduate concentration and I now plan on pursuing work on African women. I excitedly look forward to reading Achebe's new biography of a female king.
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