African Women as the Alpha and Omega of Their Own Promotion as Dealt with in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross

This paper aims at giving more insights into how African women at large can reverse the traditional trend to be the architects of their own empowerment as dealt with in the selected novels like Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross by the well-known Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In these novels, the author raises the thought-provoking issue of the great responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment today. The results of our findings will lead us to impart to the reader that the responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment is quite tremendous. With this in view, African women must use the potentials that they are endowed with so as to set the good example to the coming generation. Through the lens of feminism, womanism, and Marxist literary criticism this paper arouses African women’s awareness on the place they must carve out for themselves on the social, political, and even economic arena if they really want to stop paying lip service to gender equality.