Hexes and jinxes, maledictions, imprecations, anathema, damnation, fukú. Avada Kedavra, cursed be Canaan, Macbeth, “good luck” and screw you . . . Four recent books by African women writers turn curse narratives to historically restorative ends. Reclaiming the device from essentializing myths — a “cursed” gender, a “cursed” continent — they ask what function curses play in the manufacture of histories, families, villages and nations, simultaneously paying homage to the ostracized. These are tales of the “curse” as universal warning and hard-earned insight; as means of giving redemptive shape to suffering; as latent superpower and catalyst to solidarity.
