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"African literature (English)"
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Style in African literature : essays on literary stylistics and narrative styles
Postcolonial and contemporary African literatures have always been marked by an acute sensitivity to the politics of language, an attentiveness inscribed in the linguistic fabric of their own modes of expression. It is curious however, that despite the prevalence of a much-touted 'linguistic turn' in twentieth century theory and cultural production, language has frequently been neglected by literary studies in general. Even more curiously, postcolonial literary studies, an erstwhile emergent and now established discipline which has from the outset contained important elements of linguistic critique, has eschewed any sustained engagement with this topic. This absence is salient in the study of African literatures, despite, for instance, the prominence of orature in the African literary tradition right up to the present day, and sporadic meditations on the part of such luminaries as Achebe and Ngũgĩ. Beyond this, however, there has been little scholarly work attuned to the multifarious aspects of language and linguistic politics in the study of African literature. The present volume aims to rectify such lacunae by making a substantial interdisciplinary and transcultural contribution to the gradual reinstatement of the 'linguistic turn' in African literary studies. The volume focuses variously on postcolonial and transcultural African literatures, areas of literary production where the confluence of several languages, whether indigenous and (post)colonial in the first case, and local and global in the second case, appears to be a central and decisive factor in the formation and transformation of the continent and its peoples' cultural identities.
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Creating postcolonial literature : African writers and British publishers
Using case studies, this book explores the publishing of African literature, addressing the construction of literary value, relationships between African writers and British publishers, and importance of the African market. It analyses the historical, political and economic conditions framing the emergence of postcolonial literature.
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Eastern African literatures : towards an aesthetics of proximity
The book offers an overview of Eastern African writing in English since the mid-twentieth century. It shows how proximate modes of literary communication, arising out of residual but vibrant traditions of oral communication, blend with contemporary media to produce hybrid genres of proximity specific to Eastern African literary production.
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South Africa and the dream of love to come : queer sexuality and the struggle for freedom
After apartheid, South Africa established a celebrated new political order that imagined the postcolonial nation as belonging equally to the descendents of indigenous people, colonizing settlers, transported slaves, indentured laborers, and immigrants. Its constitution, adopted in 1996, was the first in the world to include gays and lesbians as full citizens. Brenna M. Munro examines the stories that were told about sexuality, race, and nation throughout the struggle against apartheid in order to uncover how these narratives ultimately enabled gay people to become imaginable as fellow citizens. She also traces how the gay, lesbian, or bisexual person appeared as a stock character in the pageant of nationhood during the transition to democracy. In the process, she offers an alternative cultural history of South Africa. Munro asserts that the inclusion of gay people made South Africans feel \"modern\"-at least for a while. Being gay or being lesbian was reimagined in the 1990s as distinctly South African, but the \"newness\" that made these sexualities apt symbols for a transformed nation can also be understood as foreign and un-African. Indeed, a Western-style gay identity is often interpreted through the formula \"gay equals modernity equals capitalism.\" As South Africa's reentrance into the global economy has failed to bring prosperity to the majority of its citizens, homophobic violence has been on the rise. Employing a wide array of texts-including prison memoirs, poetry, plays, television shows, photography, political speeches, and the postapartheid writings of Nobel Laureates Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee-Munro reports on how contemporary queer activists and artists are declining to remain ambassadors for the \"rainbow nation\" and refusing to become scapegoats for the perceived failures of liberation and liberalism.
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The postcolonial subject in transit
The Postcolonial Subject in Transit presents in-depth analyses of the complex transitional migratory identities evident in emerging African diasporic writings. It provides insights into the hybridity of the migrant experience, where the migrant struggles to negotiate new cultural spaces. It shows that while some migrants successfully adapt and integrate into new Western locales, others exist at the margins unable to fully negotiate cultural difference. The diaspora becomes a space for opportunities and economic mobility, as well as alienation and uncertainties. This illuminates the heterogeneity of the African diasporic narrative, expanding the dialogue of the diaspora, from one of simply loss and melancholia to self-realization and empowerment.
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Environment at the Margins
Environment at the Marginsbrings literary and environmental studies into a robust interdisciplinary dialogue, challenging dominant ideas about nature, conservation, and development in Africa and exploring alternative narratives offered by writers and environmental thinkers. The essays bring together scholarship in geography, anthropology, and environmental history with the study of African and colonial literatures and with literary modes of analysis. Contributors analyze writings by colonial administrators and literary authors, as well as by such prominent African activists and writers as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mia Couto, Nadine Gordimer, Wangari Maathai, J. M. Coetzee, Zakes Mda, and Ben Okri. These postcolonial ecocritical readings focus on dialogue not only among disciplines but also among different visions of African environments. In the process,Environment at the Marginsposits the possibility of an ecocriticism that will challenge and move beyond marginalizing, limiting visions of an imaginary Africa. Contributors:Jane CarruthersMara GoldmanAmanda HammarJonathan HighfieldDavid McDermott HughesRoderick P. NeumannRob NixonAnthony VitalLaura Wright
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