“Is ze gelijk wij?”: Witte en zwarte vrouwen in de Congoliteratuur van Vlaamse schrijfsters

Flemish colonial literature was a highly gendered affair. Canonized novels were written by
male authors like Gerard Walschap and Jef Geeraerts and black people tended to be portrayed
as highly sexualized, the women all too willing, the men as potential predators. In this article
the colonial writings – (young adult) novels and poetry – of almost all female Flemish colonial
authors are analyzed, focusing specifically on the way black and white female characters are
presented. By and large Mariette Haugen, Silja de Furne, Leen Van Marcke and Daisy Ver
Boven’s first novel repeat the racist tropes of their male colleagues. In her later novels Ver Boven
increasingly focalizes through black women, whereas the white female protagonists of the youngest
of this group, Mireille Cottenjé, are looking for the kind of sexual freedom usually reserved for
men. Black female characters hardly aspire to, let alone enjoy the type of emancipation some
white women demanded. Chronologically, decolonization and the second feminist wave partly
overlapped, but in Flemish colonial literature the sisterhood had yet to become intersectional.