Discourses about African feminist historiography seem almost superfluous in a continent determinedly questioning the relevance of an active intellectual engagement with the subject of history, even while it clearly remains paralyzed in the grip of the past. Such disturbing contradictions are apparent in the frenzied renaming of history departments in some parts of the continent, or the decision by the Nigerian government to eliminate the study of history in its elementary and secondary school system, replacing it with subject options such as ‘social studies’ and ‘photography,’ even as the nation became engulfed in a historically defined weaponization of faith and culture. For a younger generation, the admixture of intellectual amnesia and contemporary crisis, translates into a past conjured and shaped, dangerously so, only by the murky affective politics of identity, and the material constructs of progress and success. In this brittle landscape, the retrieval of an intimate history of women’s struggles and presence is all too easily dismissed as inconsequential, yet remains indispensable for addressing the deepening crisis of gendered violence and mutating patriarchies. Apart from the appealing praxis of NGO and development funding, one might say it remains outside the very margins of popular discourse. This paper explores some of the continued challenges facing African feminist scholarship, as it seeks to engage a population increasingly estranged from the alienating language of conventional historical and gendered scholarship, de rigueur of course, in postgraduate programs on the continent. It argues for an emergent form of narrative politics of history and feminist agency, with sociocultural resonance for a generation grappling with its own realities and place in history. In particular, it explores the potential for locating such a renewal in a collaboration of narrative scholarship and the new African cinema, which has found its own path to capturing the popular imagination.