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This paper investigates African women’s literature as a site of resistance against entrenched systems of oppression, including patriarchy, colonial legacies, and socio-economic marginalization. Using African and Black womanist frameworks—particularly Obioma Nnaemeka’s nego-feminism, Chikwenye Ogunyemi’s African womanism, Alice Walker’s womanist philosophy, and Mary E. Modupe Kolawole’s negotiated empowerment—the study challenges universalist feminist paradigms that often disregard African women’s cultural and historical contexts. Methodologically, the paper employs comparative literary analysis of Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003). The findings demonstrate that African women writers articulate agency through negotiation, communal ethics, and culturally embedded survival strategies rather than confrontational resistance. Firdaus’s rebellion in El Saadawi’s novel exposes the pervasive patriarchal and political oppression of Egyptian society, while Kambili’s gradual assertion of independence in Adichie’s (2003) work highlights subtler forms of emotional and spiritual dominance within postcolonial Nigerian family and religious structures. Both texts foreground the female body and voice as central to resistance and self-definition, celebrating resilience and transformative potential. The study concludes that African women’s literature contributes to a broader womanist discourse that critiques gendered subjugation while envisioning emancipatory possibilities rooted in culture, community, and ethical responsibility. These insights underscore the importance of recognizing diverse, context-specific models of empowerment in feminist scholarship.