In the 2009 African women's poetry anthology entitled Rain of Words (UVA Press), Irene Assiba d'Almeida wrote in her introduction that so many African women writers have historically found themselves in what she calls "the empty canon" -- a canon that is "unknown, uncriticized, invisible" but also "empty" because "no one bothered to look inside." This panel seeks to explore various aspects of that "empty canon" in order to unpack what makes African women and their writings (in)visible.

The panelists each contribute to this discussion in a unique way and each covers different regions of the African continent and its diaspora. The poetry of Kenyan-born Somali poet, Warsan Shire, depicts women fleeing wars in Eastern Africa who claim to have "eaten their own passports" in order to remake their identities. Joya Uraizee examines the way in which Sofia, Khadija, and other diasporic migrant women at the center of these poems render themselves visible, this after the ravages of racism and war have taken their toll. Uraizee describes the new identities that the individual speakers take on after they have experience displacement and forcible separation. Uraizee also examines the visible scars on the bodies of women caused by endless, circular journeys. Also analyzed is how these female protagonists use their minds and bodies to make their identities visible. Uraizee concludes with an examination of the new forms of visibility that African migrant women create as well as a commentary on the (in)visibility of Shire's texts.

Anny-Dominique Curtius will draw on Irene Assiba D'Almeida's critical positionality concerning the need to "destroy the emptiness of silence" and to interrogate the "empty canon." Curtius's presentation explores the ways in which Suzanne Cesaire's overlooked yet groundbreaking thinking on the Plant-Ocean-Human (1941-1945) paves the way for Edouard Glissant's acclaimed archipelagic thinking on opacity. Cross-pollinating Cesaire's philosophy on lucidity and camouflage and Glissant's poetics on transparency and opacity, this presentation ultimately unsettles the epistemological centers of Caribbean and African critique and its masculine genealogy.

Finally, Joelle Vitiello makes a comparison between well-known African and Caribbean writers such as Mariama Ba and Maryse Conde and the many African women writers who rarely come to the attention of Western readers. One such writer is Senegalese author Nafissatou Dia Diouf. Since the publication of Fatou Sow's interdisciplinary work, La recherche feministe francophone (2009), it is significant to assess why so little has changed. Vitiello's presentation examines the invisibilty of Diouf despite the publication of her several novels and short stories in different genres. Vitiello concludes with Diouf's connection with other "invisible" African women writers.

As presider, Toman will identify the common threads of (in)visibility in these very different works and summarize theories that can apply to all of these texts. She will also briefly relate these presentations to her own work on (in)visibility in African women's writing, especially in the case of Gabonese authors.