Gender and nation in Nuruddin Farah’s maps

This study focuses on Nuruddin Farah’s Maps and the author’s complex application of the “Mother Africa” trope. Since the Negritude period, many African male writers have generally exploited the image of a woman in portraying the condition of African nation-states and the African continent. Farah, as one such writer, does not only use the image of a woman to represent his nation, Somalia, but also treats “woman” and nation in a tandem. In Maps, Farah merges gender and nationhood to justify his use of this “Mother Africa” trope. Farah overlaps the condition of a woman in Africa and the nation-state so as to question the value of this analogy. His representation in Maps does not employ this trope for the sake of presenting the female gender in a demeaning way but deploys it as an allegory, which carries a dual metaphor that equates the problems or conditions of women in Africa with that of the problematic African nationhood. This study has established that the main argument that Maps appears to make is that there is no linearity in the existing discourse of nationhood or gender. In fact, the narrative directs the reader into accepting hybridised forms of national and gender identity. It treats identity as a floating entity with no fixed ground. The novel’s reference to the cartography Africa inherited from the colonialists, on the one hand, and to the conflicted traditional gender roles, on the other, seeks to question the grounds upon which African nation-states and gender derive their identity. On the whole, the study has established that the narrative of Maps appears to call for a shift aimed at dismantling these grounds and at replacing them with a more accommodative, more embracive ground that would allow for the re-imagination of the African identity and gender without the restrictive boundaries set by conventional approaches. Such a more robust and dynamic approach can lead to the easy celebration of, Africa’s unique heterogeneity of culture and language.