Over the last decade, post-colonial studies has become a defining feature in critical thought, but until very recently attention has been focused on areas other than Africa and its wealth of literature. The arrival of The Politics of (M)Othering signals an important shift of focus. African studies will certainly be setting the agenda in the future. This study of African literature examines the paradoxical location of (m)other as both central and marginal and is framed by the idea of "mother" - motherland, mothertongue, motherwit, motherhood and mothering. Whilst the volume stands as a sustained feminist analysis, it engages feminist theory itself by showing how issues in feminism are, in African literature, recast in different and complex ways. The core arguments in the volume foreground epistemological questions - the construction, containment, and dissemination of knowledge - and the role that gender politics plays in them. Even more significantly, The Politics of (M)Othering insists on the importance of cultural literacy to an effective analysis of cultural productions such as African literary texts. The volume is unique in its extensive territorial claims, in terms of genre (orature, fiction, theater, and autobiography) and geography (from all regions of Africa to the African Diaspora) This collection brings together at the forefront of African literatures - Trinh T. Minh-ha, Francoise Lionnet, Obioma Nnaemeka, Huma Ibrahim, Peter Hitchcock, Charles Sugnet, Uzo Esonwanne, Renee Larrier, Celeste Fraser Delgado, Ousseynou B. Trao D're, Julianna Nfah-Abbenyi, and Cynthia Ward.