There is usually the tendency to compare literary works of two writers when both their works are being read for learning or comparative critique assignment.
Both Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie and Rosario Castellanos were two literary giants from two different climes of distant continents, but their works built bridges that unite ethno-diversed people across culture, norms, traditions through literature.
They were remarkable authors because they did fundamental works in the world literature. They were two pillars, two icons of 20th-Century activism, whose influence transcends into the 21st century. Their works deepened reflection on womanhood and literature with messages that reecho empathy, solidarity and cooperation.
The works of the two giants resonate warmth, affection, strength and energy to Nigerians and Mexicans. Molara Ogundipe and Rosario Castellanos undoubtedly share a significant literary trajectory through their academic backgrounds, their approach to literature and philosophy and their roles as professors.
Both were university lecturers, sharing their knowledge in classrooms. Both became feminist icons in their respective regions—Mexico and Latin America for Castellanos, and Nigeria and Africa for Ogundipe—and, of course, at the international level. They were active participants in conferences and shared profound reflections through their literary works.
Molara Ogundipe and Rosario Castellanos lived during the second half of the 20th century, during which their works transcended not only the study of indigenous peoples but also offered deeply female perspectives. They aimed to dismantle male-dominated narratives about femininity while carving out their own unique perspectives, voices, and spaces in the world.
On her part, Molara Ogundipe was an extraordinary Nigerian feminist, activist, poet and writer, who became a cornerstone of international feminism. She developed Stiwanism, an African feminist approach that sought to dismantle Western perceptions of African feminism and analyze it from its own context, rooted in African realities, environments, and experiences. She studied at the University of Ibadan, the University of London, and Leiden University.
She had an illustrious career as a scholar and lecturer at various universities. She was a frontrunner in writing on gender studies and feminism in Africa and is known for the creation of the term “STIWA” or “Social Transformation in Africa Including Women.” She was also the Founder and Director of the Foundation for International Education and Monitoring.
She famously coined the concept of “stiwanism’ from the acronym STIWA – Social Transformations in Africa Including Women recognizing the need to move “away from defining feminism and feminisms in relation to Euro-America or elsewhere, and from declaiming loyalties or disloyalties.”
Ogundipe-Leslie’s critical theory of feminism, expressed in her poetry and essays, brought widespread recognition for her. Her Stiwanism is a philosophical perspective that merges African traditions, particularly Yoruba culture, with a critical examination of women’s roles and realities in Africa. Her writings evoke the essence of Nigerian and African life—its rituals, scents, traditions, and complexities. Molara Ogundipe’s impact reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, solidified her feminist movement in the 1980s, and established her as a leading voice in feminism and literature throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.
In her seminal work ‘Re-creating Ourselves’ in 1994, Molara Ogundipe (published under Molara Ogundipe-Leslie) left behind an immense body of knowledge that decolonized feminist discourse and re-centered African women in their full, complex narratives…guided by an exploration of economic, political and social liberation of African women and restoration of female agency across different cultures in Africa.
Speaking about the challenges she faced as a young academic, she said: “When I began talking and writing feminism in the late sixties and seventies, I was seen as a good and admirable girl who had gone astray, a woman whose head has been spoilt by too much learning”. But she later stood out in her leadership of the womenfolk, combining activism and academia; in 1977 she was among the founding members of AAWORD, the Association of Women in Research and Development. In 1982 she founded WIN (Women In Nigeria) to advocate for full “economic, social and political rights” for Nigerian women. She then went on to establish and direct the Foundation for International Education and Monitoring and spent many years on the editorial board of The Guardian, the famous newspaper regarded as flagship of the press in Nigeria, using it as platform for reorientation campaign.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Rosario Castellanos, novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist, and diplomat, emerged as a feminist icon in Latin American literature, particularly through her poetry, essays and critiques of social structures. Castellanos reflected on themes such as land, power, and indigenous peoples, especially in her novel Balún Canán, a title derived from the Mayan language.
Born in Mexico City, Castellanos spent her childhood and adolescence in Chiapas, an experience that deeply influenced her perspective. She studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and abroad, becoming one of the most influential professors of the 1950s and 1960s. Her essays, such as Mujer que sabe latín (A Woman Who Knows Latin), and works like Ciudad Real (City of Kings), Officio de tinieblas (The Book of Lamentations), and Días de aliento (Days of Hope), remain landmarks of reflective literature in Latin America. Her poetry, including Agonía fuera del muro (Agony Outside the Wall), resonates deeply with Ogundipe’s.
Tel Aviv, Israel-born poet and writer was the daughter of landowners from Chiapas and spent her formative years on a ranch near the Guatemalan border. She received an excellent education in Mexico and Europe. From 1960 to 1966 she was press director for the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Afterward, she held several visiting professorships in the United States and then returned to Mexico to accept the chair in comparative literature at the National Autonomous University. In 1971 Castellanos became Mexico’s ambassador to Israel, and she died there three years later.
Castellanos was passionately interested in the works of two women writers: Saint Teresa of Ávila, the Spanish 16th-century religious activist and author, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the Mexican nun-poet of the 17th century. Profoundly Catholic, her own verse also recalls the poetry of Saint John of the Cross. It expresses at once indignation at social injustice and ecstasy before the beauty of creation.
Castellanos’s poetry is as powerful and original as that of her contemporary Octavio Paz, although she is best known for her prose works. Her most famous novel, Oficio de tinieblas (1962; The Book of Lamentations), re-creates an Indian rebellion that occurred in the city of TV San Cristóbal de las Casas in the 19th century, but Castellanos sets it in the 1930s, when her own family suffered from the reforms brought about by Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Castellanos donated the land she inherited to the destitute Indians of Chiapas.
Both Ogundipe and Castellanos were no doubt trailblazers who used literature to carve out spaces for identity, reflection, and feminism. They were not only authors but also diplomats of ideas, uniting diverse perspectives through their words and teachings.
While Late Professor Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie remains a monumental figure in African feminism, Rosario Castellanos continues to inspire writers and thinkers across Latin America.
Ogundipe-Leslie succeeded in combining theoretical work with creativity and practical action. She is considered to be one of the leading critical voices on African feminism(s), gender studies and literary theory. Across the different continents and countries, Professor Ogundipe taught comparative literature, writing, gender, and English studies using literature as a vehicle for social transformation and re-thinking gender relations.
Rosario Castellanos was probably the most important Mexican woman writer of the 20th century. Her 1950 master’s thesis, Sobre cultura femenina (“On Feminine Culture”), became a turning point for modern Mexican women writers, who found in it a profound call to self-awareness. Her notable works included “Hojas al viento”, “Sobre cultura femenina”, “The Book of Lamentations”, “The Selected Poems”.
