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Chinyere Okafor is a creative writer who lives in Wichita, Kansas, USA. Her published works include fiction, Zeb Silhouette, a collection of poems titled, It Grows in Winter and Other Poems, and a scholarly book on gender and masking, Gender Performance and Communication.,. She is also a professor in the Department of Women's, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies at Wichita State University. She is known for her work on African masking, gender, and omumu culture. Her poem, Sunflower Exclusive, is the artistic piece that is engraved at Wichita's Naftzger Park.

Background and Education

Early life and education of Chinyere Okafor was in Enugu area of Nigeria. Her father, Thomas Nwokolo Okafor, was a headmaster and storyteller, and her mother, Agnes ILLO-Okafor was a seamstress and entrepreneur known for her singing skills. Her middle school education were at Rosary High School, Awgu, and Government Emergency Secondary School in Akokwa during the Nigeria-Biafra war. She completed her secondary education at Queen's School, Enugu, in Enugu State, Nigeria. Her interest in sculpturing was discouraged so she enrolled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she obtained a BA in English. Nnaemeka thinks that Okafor's creative talent in the arts seems natural but it was relegated by academic pursuit. She studied theater arts at Sherman Theatre of University College, Cardiff, Wales. She obtained her MA in African Studies at the University of Sussex, England. Her Ph.D. was from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, while her Post doctoral research was at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. From this interdisciplinary background, Okafor embarked on an academic career that has been marked by her groundbreaking research into the intricate and secretive culture of African masking, which has traditionally been considered taboo for women, and in the study, she "unravels the inner works of patriarchal power in the construction of masculinity and femininity".

Women and Mask

Okafor debunks the notion of women's exclusion from African masking and explains that it is a façade for creating the make-belief, mask-illusion, which is crucial in enacting the spirits. She launched her research finding in 1991 when she unraveled and yet upheld the mystery of the African mask while describing the elements of the inscrutable aura of mask in Research in African Literatures. She describes the complexity of female power through women's role in masking from the basis of omumu principle of birthing and creativity that allows significant female input in the supposed masculine activity. She shows how the concept of omumu empowered Igbo women of Izzi to break the boundary of gender and organize women's mask. She uses the feminine concept in masking to study other icons and female ideologies such as the American Barbie doll image, the imperial politics of knowledge production cum dissemination in popular culture and its impact on femininity and women's identity. She examines Simone de Beauvoi r's theories in the context of African women's performance of marginalization such as the bopoto among the Shona of Zimbabwe and the uwa-umunyanyi language of gender differentiation used by Igbo women in Nigeria. ]