African Women Who Fought for Freedom of Expression
4 women in the archive worked for freedom of expression. They came from different countries and different centuries, but each of them saw a wrong that others accepted and set out to change it. Read their stories to see how the same cause looked from very different lives.
4 women in the archive
ModernAssia Djebar
Algerian novelist and filmmaker born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in Cherchell. The first Algerian woman admitted to the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, she wrote about Algerian women's silenced histories, war, colonialism, and identity. Elected to the Academie Francaise in 2005.
ModernBi Kidude
Zanzibar's legendary taarab singer, who ran away from a forced marriage as a teenager, sang barefoot and unveiled when both were scandalous, kept the island's musical traditions alive across a century, and became a world music star in her nineties.
ModernMiriam Tlali
The first Black South African woman to publish a novel inside South Africa, whose banned books about township life under apartheid opened the door for generations of Black women writers.
ContemporaryTsitsi Dangarembga
Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker whose debut, Nervous Conditions, became the first novel in English by a Black Zimbabwean woman. Arrested in 2020 for protesting government corruption.