Recycling/Upcycling the Iconic Woolf? Negotiating Virginia Woolf as a Literary and Feminist Icon in Kabe Wilson's Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N'Gowfri
Résumé
In his literary artwork entitled Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N’Gowfri, Kabe Wilson recycles A Room of One’s Own into a portrait of the artist as a young, working-class, lesbian and mixed-race woman, throughout which Olivia N’Gowfri – the autodiegetic narrator and embedded creator of Wilson’s novella – battles with Woolf’s tutelary status while she reads A Room of One’s Own for the first time. This chapter argues that in laying emphasis on Olivia’s ambivalent (af)filiation with Woolf while foregrounding Woolf’s status of feminist and literary icon, Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N’Gowfri recycles, or even upcycles, the iconic Woolf that has been constituted by readers, literary critics and popular culture.