Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender

Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender PDF

Author: Florence Stratton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-23

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1000158772

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.

Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature

Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature PDF

Author: Christopher E. W. Ouma

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-27

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 3030362566

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines the representation of figures, memories and images of childhood in selected contemporary diasporic African fiction by Adichie, Abani, Wainaina and Oyeyemi. The book argues that childhood is a key framework for thinking about contemporary African and African Diasporic identities. It argues that through the privileging of childhood memory, alternative conceptions of time emerge in this literature, and which allow African writers to re-imagine what family, ethnicity, nation means within the new spaces of diaspora that a majority of them occupy. The book therefore looks at the connections between childhood, space, time and memory, childhood gender and sexuality, childhoods in contexts of war, as well as migrant childhoods. These dimensions of childhood particularly relate to the return of the memory of Biafra, the figures of child soldiers, memories of growing up in Cold War Africa, queer boyhoods/sonhood as well as experiences of migration within Africa, North America and Europe.

Reading Contemporary African Literature

Reading Contemporary African Literature PDF

Author: Reuben Makayiko Chirambo

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 9401209375

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Reading Contemporary African Literature brings together scholarship on, critical debates about, and examples of reading African literature in all genres – poetry, fiction, and drama including popular culture. The anthology offers studies of African literature from interdisciplinary perspectives that employ sociological, historical, and ethnographic besides literary analysis of the literatures. It has assembled critical and researched essays on a range of topics, theoretical and empirical, by renowned critics and theorists of African literature that evaluate and provide examples of reading African literature that should be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of African literature, culture, and history amongst other subjects. Some of the essays examine authors that have received little or no attention to date in books on recent African literature. These essays provide new insights and scholarship that should broaden and deepen our understanding and appreciation of African literature.

Prayers to Survive Wars that Last

Prayers to Survive Wars that Last PDF

Author: Eze, Chielozona

Publisher: Cissus World Press

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13: 0997868945

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“In this meditative and quietly lyrical approach, Chielozona Eze marks himself in this new African poetics not as a voice of easy protest, not as the voice of a bombast and rhetorical turn, but as the voice of an African poet in the twenty-first century trying to make sense of all the hunger, anger, war, loss, and desecration that has haunted his life and the lives of many Africans but remains always poised on that tender grace, that ease of dance, that transubstantiation that works an alchemy that is not about the outcome but always about the struggle, the engagement, and the terms thereof.” Chris Abani, Board of Trustee Professor of English, Northwestern University “This collection is a fitting memorial to a war still unatoned for and its accompanying sense of bereavement and lack of closure. In tune with a pervasive sense of loss and quiet recollection, the poems are meditative, packing a punch in their ambling profundity; Chielozona Eze does not blame; he speaks of introspection and love.” Amatoritsero Ede, Publisher & Managing Editor, Maple Tree Literary Supplement

Gods and Soldiers

Gods and Soldiers PDF

Author: Rob Spillman

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 110105042X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A one-of-a-kind collection showcasing the energy of new African literature Coming at a time when Africa and African writers are in the midst of a remarkable renaissance, Gods and Soldiers captures the vitality and urgency of African writing today. With stories from northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, this collection conveys thirty different ways of approaching what it means to be African. Whether about life in the new urban melting pots of Cape Town and Luanda, or amid the battlefield chaos of Zimbabwe and Somalia, or set in the imaginary surreal landscapes born out of the oral storytelling tradition, these stories represent a striking cross section of extraordinary writing. Including works by J. M. Coetzee, Chimamanda Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Chinua Achebe, and edited by Rob Spillman of Tin House magazine, Gods and Soldiers features many pieces never before published, making it a vibrant and essential glimpse of Africa as it enters the twenty-first century.

Intertextuality in Contemporary African Literature

Intertextuality in Contemporary African Literature PDF

Author: Ode Ogede

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2011-09-16

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0739164465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Intellectual exchange among African creative writers is the subject of this highly innovative and wide-ranging look at several forms of intertextuality on the continent. Focusing on the issue of the availability of old canonical texts of African literature as a creative resource, this study throws light on how African authors adapt, reinterpret, and redeploy existing texts in the formulation of new ones. Contemporary African writers are taking advantage of and extending the resources available in the existing native literary tradition. But the field of inter-ethnic/trans-national African literary inter-textual studies is a novel one in itself as the theme of African writers' debt to Euro-American authors has been the critical commonplace in African literature. Detailing the echoes and reverberations the voices of the past have generated, and the distinctive uses to which the writers are putting one another's works, the book demonstrates that the influence of local stock is significant: it is pervasive andwidespread, and manifests itself in ways both random and systematic, but it is a ubiquitous presence in the African literary imagination.

Contemporary African Literature

Contemporary African Literature PDF

Author: Tanure Ojaide

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781611630299

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Contemporary African Literature: New Approaches comprises essays that go beyond conventional literary studies to open new vistas for critical excursion. It deals not only with purely literary issues of canonization, language, aesthetics, and scholar-poet traditions that have barely been addressed directly in recent studies but also with diverse interdisciplinary topics in literature as of migration, globalization, environmental and human rights, and gender. Written from his scholar-poet position, Tanure Ojaide's essays address pertinent issues that need to be either examined or reexamined in the current condition of Africa in the age of globalization and democratization. The collection of essays also brings literature to bear on issues that have become new concerns for writers and the general African populace. It widens the scope of the African experience in literature as never before. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "This book is a worthy read, and its panoramic view will leave any reader familiar with African literature, especially in the areas of poetry and fiction, with ample cause to appreciate Tanure Ojaide's literary foresight and the merits of his scholarship." -- World Literature Today

Contemporary African American Literature

Contemporary African American Literature PDF

Author: Lovalerie King

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-08-28

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 025300697X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Essays exploring contemporary black fiction and examining important issues in current African American literary studies. In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join writers and younger scholars to explore the work of Toni Morrison, Edward P. Jones, Trey Ellis, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Kyle Baker, Danzy Senna, Nikki Turner, and many others. The collection is bracketed by a foreword by novelist and graphic artist Mat Johnson, one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary African American writers, and an afterword by Alice Randall, author of the controversial parody The Wind Done Gone. Together, King and Moody-Turner make the case that diversity, innovation, and canon expansion are essential to maintaining the vitality of African American literary studies. “A compelling collection of essays on the ongoing relevance of African American literature to our collective understanding of American history, society, and culture. Featuring a wide array of writers from all corners of the literary academy, the book will have national appeal and offer strategies for teaching African American literature in colleges and universities across the country.” —Gene Jarrett, Boston University “[This book describes] a fruitful tension that brings scholars of major reputation together with newly emerging critics to explore the full range of literary activities that have flourished in the post-Civil Rights era. Notable are such popular influences as hip-hop music and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.” —American Literary Scholarship, 2013