Women Empowerment Depicted in the Novel Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abstract

Afterlives is a historical fiction novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. This novel also delivers how the people in Tanzania live during the circumstances of war that is ongoing under German colonization. This study focuses especially with how women cope up during those difficult time and how they live under the gender stereotypes of what they should do and should not do, with Afiya as the focus. This study aims to describe how Afiya lives as a woman with the gender stereotype during that era within the lens of feminism. With the women empowerment concept, Afiya acts on how she wants to and not let anyone’s opinion getting into her choices. The data is collected from the narrative story inside the novel. The researcher identified the data and further used the qualitative descriptive through the lens of feminism to analyze the data. With the concept of women empowerment, this study reveals that Afiya manages to get what she wants in education, social, and also psychological and breakthrough the gender stereotypes in Tanzania during that era.