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FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY Investigates what literary strategies
African writers adopt to convey the impact of climate
transformation and environmental change. This special issue
examines the ways fiction and poetry engage with environmental
consciousness, and how African literary criticism addresses the
implications of global environmental transformations. Does
environmentalist literature offer new possibilities for critical
thinking about the future? What constitutes environmentalist
fiction and poetry? What kind of texts, themes and topics does
climate writing include? Does any text in which the environment
features become available to environmentalist criticism? In their
engagement with the diverse genres, themes and frameworks through
which contemporary African writers address topics including
urbanisation, cross-species communication, nature and climate
change, contributors to this special issue help to define African
environmental writing. They look at the literary strategies adopted
by creative writers to convey the impact of environmental
transformationin narratives that are historically informed by a
century of colonialism, nationalist political activism,
urbanisation and postcolonial migration. How does environmental
literature intervene in these histories? Can creative writers, with
their powerfully post-human and cross-species imaginations, carry
out the ethical work demanded by contemporary climate science? From
Tanure Ojaide's and Helon Habila's attention to environmental
decimation in the Niger Delta through to Nnedi Okorafor's and Kofi
Anyidoho's imaginative cross-species encounters, the special issue
asks how literature mediates the specificities of climate change in
an era of global capitalism and technological transformation, and
what the limits of creative writing and literary criticism are as
tools for discussing environmental issues. Guest Editors: Cajetan
Iheka (Associate Professor of English, Yale University) and
Stephanie Newell (Professor of English, Yale University) Series
Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the
University of Michigan-Flint) Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow,
Department of English University of Central Florida)
PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY AFRICAN LITERATURE TODAY was
established at a time of uncertainty and reconstruction but for 50
years it has played a leading role in nurturing imaginative
creativity and its criticism onthe African continent and beyond.
Contemporary African creative writers have confidently taken
strides which resonate all over the world. The daring diversities,
stylistic innovations and enchanting audacities which characterize
their works across many different genres resonate with readers
beyond African geographic and linguistic boundaries. Writers in
Africa and the diaspora seem to be speaking with collective and
individual voices that compel world attention and admiration. And
they arebeing read in numerous world languages. This volume's
contributors recognize the foundations laid by the pioneer African
writers as they point vigorously to contemporary writers who have
moved African imaginative creativityforward with utmost integrity,
and to the critics who continue to respond with unyielding
tenacity. The founding Editor of ALT, Professor Eldred Durosimi
Jones, recalls in an interview in this volume, the role ALT played
in the evolution and stimulation of a wave of African literary
studies and criticism in mid-20th century: "The 1960s saw a good
deal of activity among scholars teaching African Literature
throughout Africa and the world, and this ledto a series of
conferences in African Literature in Dakar, Nairobi, and
Freetown.around the idea of communication between the various
English Departments which took an interest in African Literature.
We decided on a bulletin, which was just a kind of newsletter
between departments saying what was going on....it was that
bulletin that showed the potential of this kind of communication...
after that we started African Literature Today as a journal
inviting articles on the works of African writers." Contributors to
the series demonstrate the impact of the growth in studies and
criticism of African Literature in the 50 years since its founding.
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies
at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi
Nwakanma
PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY Imagined or actual returns to a
"homeland" in African literature are examined in relation to
changing concepts of identity, belonging, migration and space. This
special issue focuses on literary texts by African writers in which
the protagonist returns to his/her "original" or ancestral "home"
in Africa from other parts of the world. Ideas of return -
intentional and actual - have been a consistent feature of the
literature of Africa and the African diaspora: from Equiano's
autobiography in 1789 to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel
Americanah. African literature has represented returnees in a range
of locations and dislocations including having a sense of
belonging, being alienated in a country they can no longer
recognize, or experiencing a multiple sense of place. Contributors,
writing on literature from the 1970s to thepresent, examine the
extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without
renegotiations of "home". GUEST EDITORS: HELEN COUSINS, Reader in
Postcolonial Literature at Newman University, Birmingham,
UK;PAULINE DODGSON-KATIYO, was formerly Head of English at Newman
University, Birmingham, UK, and Dean of the School of Arts at
Anglia Ruskin University. Series Editor: Ernest Emenyonu is
Professor of Africana Studies atthe University of Michigan-Flint,
USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
Interrogates and explores African literature in African languages
today, and the continuing interfaces between works in indigenous
languages and those written in European languages or languages of
colonizers. Sixty years after the Conference of African Writers of
English Expression at Makerere University, the dominance in the
global canon of African literatures written in European languages
over those in indigenous languages continues to be an issue. This
volume of ALT re-examines this central question of African
literatures to ask, 'What is the state of African literatures in
African languages today?' Contributors discuss the translation of
Gurnah's novel Paradise to Swahili, and Osemwegie's áťráť Epic to
English, and Wolof wrestlers' panegyrics. They analyse Edo
eco-critical poetry, and the poetics of Igbo mask poetry, and
morality in early prose fiction in indigenous Nigerian languages.
Other essays contribute a semiotic analysis of Duruaku's A Matter
of Identity, and the decolonization of trauma in Uwem Akpan's Say
You're One of Them. Overall, the volume paints a complex image of
African cultural production in indigenous languages, especially in
the ways Africa's oral performance traditions remain resilient in
the face of a seemingly undiminished presence of non-African
language literary traditions.
Investigates what literary strategies African writers adopt to
convey the impact of climate transformation and environmental
change. This special issue examines the ways fiction and poetry
engage with environmental consciousness, and how African literary
criticism addresses the implications of global environmental
transformations. Does environmentalist literature offer new
possibilities for critical thinking about the future? What
constitutes environmentalist fiction and poetry? What kind of
texts, themes and topics does climate writing include? Does any
text in which the environment features become available to
environmentalist criticism? In their engagement with the diverse
genres, themes and frameworks through which contemporary African
writers address topics including urbanisation, cross-species
communication, nature and climate change, contributors to this
special issue help to define African environmental writing. They
look at the literary strategies adopted by creative writers to
convey the impact of environmental transformationin narratives that
are historically informed by a century of colonialism, nationalist
political activism, urbanisation and postcolonial migration. How
does environmental literature intervene in these histories? Can
creative writers, with their powerfully post-human and
cross-species imaginations, carry out the ethical work demanded by
contemporary climate science? From Tanure Ojaide's and Helon
Habila's attention to environmental decimation in the Niger Delta
through to Nnedi Okorafor's and Kofi Anyidoho's imaginative
cross-species encounters, the special issue asks how literature
mediates the specificities of climate change in an era of global
capitalism and technological transformation, and what the limits of
creative writing and literary criticism are as tools for discussing
environmental issues. This volume also includes a Literary
Supplement. Guest Editors: Cajetan Iheka (Associate Professor of
English, Yale University) and Stephanie Newell (Professor of
English, Yale University) Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu
(Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)
Reviews Editor:Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English
University of Central Florida)
As well as a rare examination of Egyptian literature, this volume
includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles and a Literary
Supplement. Creativity has flourished in Egypt, a historically
important and strategically located North African country and a
leading nation in the Arab world. The main focus in this volume is
to examine Egyptian writers, especially those whose works have
enriched African Literature through their depiction of historical,
cultural and socio-political forces such as Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf
Idris, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Tawfiq al-Hakim and Alifa
Rifaat (Fatimah Rifaat). Writing in both Arabic and the English
language, their thematic concerns have been as versatile as they
have been controversial. Nawal El Saadawi provides a Foreword to
the volume and an interview. This volume also includes a non-themed
section of Featured Articles and a Literary Supplement. Volume
Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is
Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint,
USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
Contributors analyse the theories behind children's literature, its
functions and cultural significance, and suggest the new directions
this literature is taking in terms of its craft, themes and
intentions. Africa's encounter with the West and its implications
and consequences remain far-reaching and enduring in the craft and
thrust of its creative writers. The contributors to ALT 33 analyse
the connections between traditional stories and myths that have
been told to children, as well as the work of contemporary creative
writers who are writing for children in order that they understand
this complex history. Some of these writers are developing
traditional myths, folk tales, and legends and are writing them in
new forms, while others focus on the encounter with the West that
has dominated much modern African literature for adults. The
previous neglect of the cultural significance, study, criticism and
teaching of children's literature is addressed in this volume: How
can the successes and/or failures of stories and story-telling for
children in Africa be measured? Are there models to be followed and
whatmakes them models? What is the relationship between the text
and the illustration of children's books? What should guide the
reader or critic of children's literature coming out of Africa -
globalism, transculturality or internalregionalism? What problems
confront teachers, students, publishers and promoters of children's
books in Africa? Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies
at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is
composed of scholars from US, UK and African universities. Reviews
Editor: Obi Nwakanma HEBN: Nigeria
This book looks at the trends in the development of the Igbo novel
from its antecedents in oral performance, through the emergence of
the first published novel, Omenuko, in 1933 by Pita Nwana, to the
contemporary Igbo novel. Defining "Igbo literature" as literature
in Igbo language, and "Igbo novel" as a novel written in Igbo
language, the author argues that oral and written literature in
African indigenous languages hold an important foundational
position in the history of African literature. Focusing on the
contributions of Igbo writers to the development of African
literature in African languages, the book examines the evolution,
themes, and distinctive features of the Igbo novel, the historical
circumstances of the rise of the African novel in the pre-colonial,
era and their impact on the contemporary Igbo novel. This book will
be of interest to scholars of African literature, literary history,
and Igbo studies.
Explores and interrogates the many and diverse perspectives of the
new frontiers of African literary studies. Publication of the
seminal volume African Literature Comes of Age, by C.D.
Narasimhaiah (India) and Ernest N. Emenyonu (Nigeria), in 1988
generated the consciousness that African literature had attained
maturity by the evolution of diverse concerns among scholars,
critics, and researchers over the decades following the
publication, in the English language, of Chinua Achebe's Things
Fall Apart in 1958. Since the publication of the first volume of
African Literature Today (ALT) in the 1970s, the writings of
Africans across the continent have spread across the globe,
constituting refreshing and hitherto unimaginable epistemologies.
This 40th volume provides a serious critical response to those
changing horizons and reflects African literature's maturity,
diversity, scope, spread, and above all, relevance. The topics
discussed range from sickle cell disease to the animalization of
humans, new feminisms and stereotypes of womanhood, the different
shades of black masculinity, and political exploitation in creative
works. Reaching across boundaries, recent fictions are seen to
suggest a widening of conventional literary genres, and new forms
that change the known trajectories of dramatic theatre. The
substance, freshness, and vitality that characterize the articles
in this volume of African Literature Today bring a welcome
perspective to the continent's rich creative life.
How have African writers addressed the issue of war and its impact
across the continent? Since the second half of the twentieth
century, no single phenomenon has marred the image and development
of Africa more than senseless fratricidal wars which rapidly
followed the political independence of nations. This issue
ofAfrican Literature Today is devoted to studies of how African
writers, as historical witnesses, have handled the recreation of
war as a cataclysmic phenomenon in various locations on the
continent. The contributors explore the subject from a variety of
perspectives: panoramic, regional, national and through comparative
studies. War has enriched contemporary African literature, but at
what price to human lives, peace and the environment?
ERNESTEMENYONU is Professor of the Department of Africana Studies
University of Michigan-Flint. The contributors include: CHIMALUM
NWANKWO, CHRISTINE MATZKE, CLEMENT A. OKAFOR, INIBONG I. UKO, OIKE
MACHIKO, SOPHIE OGWUDE, MAURICE TAONEZVI VAMBE, ZOE NORRIDGE and
ISIDORE DIALA. Nigeria: HEBN
Brings together experiences of teachers of African literature from
around the world in the context of technological change. Focuses on
theoretical and pedagogical approaches to the teaching of African
Literature on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. The
publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in 1958 drew
universal attention not only to contemporary African creative
imagination, but also established the art of the modern African
novel. In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the
Nobel Prize for Literature, and opened the 'gate' for other African
writers. By the close of the 20th century, African Literature had
gained world-wide acceptance and legitimacy in the academy and
featured on the literature curriculum of schools and colleges
across the globe. This specialissue of African Literature Today,
examines the diverse experiences of teachers of African Literature
across regional, racial, cultural and national boundaries. It
explores such issues as student responses, productive pedagogical
innovations, the impact of modern technology, case studies of
online teaching, teaching Criticism of African Literature, and
teaching African Literature in an age of multiculturalism. It is
intended as an invaluable teacher's handbook and essential student
companion for the effective study of African Literature. Ernest
Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of
Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars
from US, UK and African universities Nigeria: HEBN
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ALT 39 - Speculative & Science Fiction (Hardcover)
Ernest N. Emenyonu; Edited by (ghost editors) Louisa Uchumegbunike, Chimalum Nwankwo; Contributions by Gabriel Bamgbose, Kayode Odumboni, …
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R2,223
Discovery Miles 22 230
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Explores the ways in which African writers have approached
speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of
language, terminology and the genealogy of the works. Over the past
two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African
and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing.
Recent discussions around the "rise of science-fiction and fantasy"
in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars
have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new
phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the
African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still
register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences
can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O.
Fagunwa's classic novel (1938) Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The
Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga), the mythopoeia of
Elechi Amadi's The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian
writing of Buchi Emecheta in The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume
shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining
African classics such as Kojo Laing's Woman of the Aeroplanes
(1988) and the oeuvre of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The volume also
critically examines modern African texts from writers including
Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as
critically looking at the terms 'Afrofuturism' and
'Africanfuturism' vis-a-vis their particular cultural aesthetics
and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative
arts. This volume also includes a Literary Supplement. Guest
Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and
Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO
(Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies,
Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria). Series Editor: Ernest N.
Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of
Michigan-Flint) Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of
English University of Central Florida).
ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative
(re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and
contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and
abroad. Debates on the future of the African continent and the role
of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in
literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in
exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity
in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films.
Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans,
Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere,
continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of
these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western
identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent
indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the
new social media have gained importance, both as sources of
information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender
identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of
responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible
across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John
Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African
writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema,to show
how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and
point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic
output. This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured
Articles anda Literary Supplement. Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is
Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara University
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies
at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi
Nwakanma
AFRICAN LITERATURE TODAY was established at a time of uncertainty
and reconstruction but for 50 years it has played a leading role in
nurturing imaginative creativity and its criticism on the African
continent and beyond. Contemporary African creative writers have
confidently taken strides which resonate all over the world. The
daring diversities, stylistic innovations and enchanting audacities
which characterize their works across many different genres
resonate with readers beyond African geographic and linguistic
boundaries. Writers in Africa and the diaspora seem to be speaking
with collective and individual voices that compel world attention
and admiration. And they arebeing read in numerous world languages.
This volume's contributors recognize the foundations laid by the
pioneer African writers as they point vigorously to contemporary
writers who have moved African imaginative creativityforward with
utmost integrity, and to the critics who continue to respond with
unyielding tenacity. The founding Editor of ALT, Professor Eldred
Durosimi Jones, recalls in an interview in this volume, the role
ALT played in the evolution and stimulation of a wave of African
literary studies and criticism in mid-20th century: "The 1960s saw
a good deal of activity among scholars teaching African Literature
throughout Africa and the world, and this ledto a series of
conferences in African Literature in Dakar, Nairobi, and
Freetown.around the idea of communication between the various
English Departments which took an interest in African Literature.
We decided on a bulletin, which was just a kind of newsletter
between departments saying what was going on....it was that
bulletin that showed the potential of this kind of communication...
after that we started African Literature Today as a journal
inviting articles on the works of African writers." Contributors to
the series demonstrate the impact of the growth in studies and
criticism of African Literature in the 50 years since its founding.
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies
at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi
Nwakanma
This book looks at the trends in the development of the Igbo novel
from its antecedents in oral performance, through the emergence of
the first published novel, Omenuko, in 1933 by Pita Nwana, to the
contemporary Igbo novel. Defining "Igbo literature" as literature
in Igbo language, and "Igbo novel" as a novel written in Igbo
language, the author argues that oral and written literature in
African indigenous languages hold an important foundational
position in the history of African literature. Focusing on the
contributions of Igbo writers to the development of African
literature in African languages, the book examines the evolution,
themes, and distinctive features of the Igbo novel, the historical
circumstances of the rise of the African novel in the pre-colonial,
era and their impact on the contemporary Igbo novel. This book will
be of interest to scholars of African literature, literary history,
and Igbo studies.
From Hollywood to Nollywood: this issue of African Literature Today
examines the relationship between film and video and the
literatures of Africa. A recent literary phenomenon in contemporary
Africa is the developing relationship between film and African
literature. ALT 28 focuses on the interface between film and
literature in contemporary African writing and imagination.
Contributors have examined the issue from a variety of
perspectives: critiques of adaptations of African creative works
into film, analyses of filmic structures in African dramatic
literature, African writers as film makers, and the impact of the
video film industry on literature and the reading culture in
Africa. Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of the Department of
Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint Nigeria: HEBN
This issue of African Literature Today focuses on new novels by
emerging as well as established African novelists. This is a
seminal work that discusses the validity of the perception that the
new generation of African novelists is remarkably different in
vision, style, and worldview from the older generation. The
contention is that the oldergeneration novelists who were too close
to the colonial period in Africa had invariably made
culture-conflict and little else their dominant thematic concern
while the younger generation novelists are more versatile in their
thematic preoccupations, and are more global in their vision and
style. Do the facts in the novels justify and validate these
claims? The 13 papers in this volume have been carefully selected
to consider these issues. Brenda Cooper a renowned literary scholar
from Cape Town writes on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple
Hibiscus, while Charles Nnolim writes about Adichie's more recent
novel Half of a Yellow Sun; Omar Sougou of Universite GastonBerger,
Senegal discusses 'ambivalent inscriptions' in Buchi Emecheta's
later novels; Clement Okafor of the University of Maryland,
addresses the theme of 'racial memory' in Isidore Okpewho's Call Me
By My Rightful Name, juxtaposed between the world of the old and
the realities of the present. Joseph McLaren, Hofstra University,
New York, discusses Ngugi's latest novel, Wizard of the Crow, while
Machiko Oike, Hiroshima University, Japan looksat a new theme in
African adolescent literature, 'youth in an era of HIV/AIDS'. There
is abundant evidence of the contrasts and diversities which
characterize the African novel not only geographically, but also
ideologically andgenerationally. ERNEST EMENYONU is Professor of
the Department of Africana Studies University of Michigan-Flint.
Nigeria: HEBN
Imagined or actual returns to a "homeland" in African literature
are examined in relation to changing concepts of identity,
belonging, migration and space. This special issue focuses on
literary texts by African writers in which the protagonist returns
to his/her "original" or ancestral "home" in Africa from other
parts of the world. Ideas of return - intentional and actual - have
been a consistent feature of the literature of Africa and the
African diaspora: from Equiano's autobiography in 1789 to
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah. African
literature has represented returnees in a range of locations and
dislocations including having a sense of belonging, being alienated
in a country they can no longer recognize, or experiencing a
multiple sense of place. Contributors, writing on literature from
the 1970s to thepresent, examine the extent to which the original
place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of "home".
GUEST EDITORS: HELEN COUSINS, Reader in Postcolonial Literature at
Newman University, Birmingham, UK; PAULINE DODGSON-KATIYO, was
formerly Head of English at Newman University, Birmingham, UK, and
Dean of the School of Arts at Anglia Ruskin University. Series
Editor: Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the
University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY As well as a rare examination of
Egyptian literature, this volume includes a non-themed section of
Featured Articles and a Literary Supplement. The main focus in this
volume is to examine Egyptian writers, especially those whose works
have enriched African Literature through their depiction of
historical, cultural and socio-political forces such as Naguib
Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Tawfiq
al-Hakim and Alifa Rifaat (Fatimah Rifaat). Writing in both Arabic
and the English language, their thematic concerns have been as
versatile as they have been controversial. Nawal El Saadawi
provides a Forewrod to the volume and an interview. Volume Editor:
Ernest N. Emenyonu Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor
of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
A critical examination of the engaging voice and multiple stories
of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on war, feminism, art, ideology, hair,
complex human identities and the challenges of multicultural
existence. Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era
and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and
introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized
contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus
(2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your
Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a
preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with
ingeniouscraftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate
love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with
extravagant and versatile narrative innovations. Through her
writings, she has made herself relevant topeople of all ages -
across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings
on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for
budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her
imaginativecreativity as they expand and define her mission as a
writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay,
giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in
literary theory. Her contributionsto African, Diasporic and World
literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and
interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines
her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to
war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of
multicultural existence and complex human identities.
Examines some of the varied African literary responses to politics
and social justice and injustice under colonialism/neocolonialism.
In 1965, Chinua Achebe, in his classic essay "The Novelist as
Teacher", declared that the "African past - with all its
imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the
early Europeans acting on God's behalf, delivered them." That
assertion included a still reverberating sentiment shared by many
of the first generation of African writers that it is possible to
reclaim that distorted past creatively in order to show and
understand "where andwhen the rain started beating Africa". Many
genres and forms of literary and cultural production have recalled
and recorded and reconfigured that past - many projecting a new
confident African future defined by self-determination. The
spectrum of that complex engagement, which encompasses critical
issues in politics and social justice, provides the basis of this
volume, which concludes with tributes to the life and works of Kofi
Awoonor. Articles on: Binyavanga Wainaina + Ben Okri &
Nationhood + J.M. Coetzee & the Philosophy of Justice + Isidore
Okpewho & "Manhood" + Ngugi's Matigari & the Postcolonial
Nation + Politics & Women in Irene Salami's MoreThan Dancing +
Ayi Kwei Armah's The Resolutionaries Ernest Emenyonu is Professor
of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the
editorial board is composed of scholars from US, UK and African
universities Nigeria: HEBN
The success of the Caine Prize for African Writing and the growth
of online publishing have played key roles in putting the short
story in its rightful place within the study and criticism of
African literature. African writers have, much more than the
critics, recognized the beauty and potency of the short story.
Always the least studied in African literature classrooms and the
most critically overlooked genre in African literature today, the
African short story is now given the attention it deserves.
Contributors here take a close look at the African short story to
re-define its own peculiar pedigree, chart its trajectory, critique
its present state and examineits creative possibilities. They
examine how the short story and the novel complement each other, or
exist in contradistinction, within the context of culture and
politics, history and public memory, legends, myths and folklore.
Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University
of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars
from US, UK and African universities Nigeria: HEBN
PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on
Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position
formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression
among Africans on the continent, and abroad. Debates on the future
of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these
visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as
African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face
and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories,
novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities
in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization
and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing
and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with
longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition
to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance,
both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual
construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious
issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is
strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT,
guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in
both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African
cinema,to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and
theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary
and cinematic output. This volume also includes a non-themed
section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement. Guest
Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English,
Santa Clara University Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is
Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint,
USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
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