Provides a crucial baseline for asking further gendered questions. More extensive case studies require a foundation to build on. Penvenne's pathbreaking book provides that foundation, both through the inclusion of women's narratives, songs, and broader cultural gendered practices in its analysis and through the powerful narratives revealing women workers' lives, dreams, and frustrations. Women, Migration and the Cashew Economy demonstrates ... Read morethe importance of these more eclectic research methods and the centrality of gender for understanding urban life in colonial Africa.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
One of the most enjoyable books to read in the field of oral history.
THE ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW
A warm and generous narrative . [Penvenne's] methodology to uncover the details about female workers was to listen to them as 'narrators,' not merely 'informants' . Through this method, women, their work, and their values take their rightful place with the androcentric and state-centric narratives that have thus far been normative.
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY
With an epilogue addressing the devastation of Mozambique's cashew processing industry by war and World Bank policies after 1975, helpful glossary and maps, and a lively (and often urgent) narrative style, Women, Migration, and the Cashew Economy is a much-needed corrective to Mozambican labour history. It should also be welcomed as a valuable Lusophone contribution to the historiography of gender in colonial Africa, and as an engaging resource for undergraduate and graduate classes.
THE JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY
Based on extensive interviews with former cashew workers, as well as wide-ranging research into the colonial archives, Penvenne's book fills a significant gap within the history of Mozambique while offering important correctives to some of African labor history's underexamined assumptions. The most important of these interventions is Penvenne's persuasive argument against the enduring focus on specific types of predominantly male labor.
AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
This book is an important read for scholars interested in understanding the impact of women's labor in industrial and urbanization processes in Mozambique in particular and southern Africa in general. It is a must read for those interested in exploring the use of African women's narratives, conversations, and songs as central to the history of southern Africa.
IJAHS
Show Less