1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature
The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature introduces world literature readers to the transnational, multivocal writings of immigrant African authors. Covering works produced in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the world, this book investigates three major aesthetic paradigms in African diasporic literature: the Sankofan wave (late 1960s–early 1990s); the Janusian wave (1990s–2020s); and the Offshoots of the New Arrivants (those born and growing up outside Africa).
Written by well-established and emerging scholars of African and diasporic literatures from across the world, the chapters in the book cover the works of well-known and not-so-well-known Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone writers from different theoretical positionalities and critical approaches, pointing out the unique innovative artistic qualities of this major subgenre of African literature. The focus on the “diasporic consciousness” of the writers and their works sets this handbook apart from others that solely emphasize migration, which is more of a process than the community of settled African people involved in the dynamic acts of living reflected in diasporic writings.
This book will appeal to researchers and students from across the fields of Literature, Diaspora Studies, African Studies, Migration Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction: Trends in the New African Diasporic Literature
Lokangaka Losambe and Tanure Ojaide
Part I: The Sankofan Wave (late 1960s – early 1990s)
A. Anglophone Perspectives
1. The Shapeshifter in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Migrant Writing
Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ
2. Abdulrazak Gurnah and V.S. Naipaul: Memory of Departure vs. Enigma of Arrival
Simon Keith Lewis
3. Paradise Destroyed: Exile and Diaspora in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names
Joya Uraizee
4. Diaspora as Motif in the Poetry of Jack Mapanje, Frank Chipasula and Lupenga Mphande
Dike Okoro
5. Keorapetse Kgositsile and the Erotics of Black World Archives
Uhuru Portia Phalafala
6. Contextualizing Racism and Humanity in Dennis Brutus’s Poetry
Kehinde Akano
7. Zoë Wicomb and the Poetics of Social Irony
Stefan Helgesson
8. ‘Dizzy with the To-ing and Fro-ing’: Diasporic Prose of the ‘New South Africa’
Peter Blair
9. Cultural Displacement, Identity and Home in Buchi Emecheta’s Diasporic Fiction
H. Oby Okolocha
10. Writing Against the Rift: Ben Okri’s Diasporic Consciousness Defies Closure
Rosemary Gray
11. Troubadours, They Traverse: Global Vision and Diasporic Imagination in the Poetry of Niyi Osundare and Tijan Sallah
Wumi Raji
12. The Place of Memory and the Memory of Place in Tanure Ojaide’s Diasporic Poems
Saeedat Bolajoko Aliyu
13. Living in the Interstices: Afropolitanism and the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Alfred Kisubi
Edoama Odueme
14. Tracing the ‘Missing Link’: Postcolonial Reconfigurations and Diasporic Imaginaries in Funso Aiyejina’s Writing
Olajumoke Verissimo
15. New African Diasporic Drama: Nigerian Meaning-Making Identities and Ethos
Mabel Evwierhoma
16. (W)righting the African Diaspora: Tess Onwueme’s Interrogation of African Diasporic Trauma, History, and Belonging
Maureen N. Eke
B. Francophone Perspectives
17. Historical Afroeuropean and Transatlantic Mobilities in Contemporary Francophone Afrodiasporic Fiction
Anna-Leena Toivanen
18. Ivoiritié in Tanella Boni’s Exile Discourse
Honoré Missihoun
19. Tale(ing) Africa in a Global Context: War, Nature, and Pandemic in Veronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda and In the Company of Men
Zaynab Ango
20. Congolese Trasnational/Diasporic Writers and their Multi-Pronged Fights
Kasongo Mulenda Kapanga
Part II: The Janusian Wave (1990s and 2020s)
A. Anglophone Perspectives
21. Benjamin Kwakye and Okey Ndibe: Migration and Diasporic Encounters
Joseph McLaren
22. Negotiating Home in the New World African Diasporic Wrtings: The Niger Delta and Black Canadian Geographies in the Poetry of Nduka Otiono and Amatoritsero Ede
Mathias Iroro Orhero
23. Helon Habila’s Narratives: Thematic Visions and Narratology in The Chibok Girls and Travelers.
Effiok Bassey Uwatt
24. Diasporic Consciousness and Narrative Ambiguity in Short Stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chika Unigwe
Daria Tunca
25. Chika Unigwe’s Better Never than Late: Engaging the African Immigrant Experience in Belgium, Europe.
Enajite Ojaruega
26. Chris Abani, The Anthropocene, and Transnational Ecoglobal Criticism
Sarah E. Turner
27. Dinaw Mengestu’s Diasporic Practice
Taylor Eggan
28. Cruel Optimism: The Longings of Outsiders Within Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
29. The Poetics of Mobility, Proximity, and Emb’race in Joyce Ash’s A Basket of Flaming Ashes (2010) and Beautiful Fire (2018)
Gilbert Shang Ndi
30. Holding the Global Gaze: The Image of Africa and the Unapologetic Aesthetics of (Un)Belonging in the Second Wave New African Diasporic Literatures: NoViolet Bulawayo, Sefi Atta, Zukiswa Wanner, and Nana Nkweti
Martha Ndakalako
31. The Poetics of Unhomeliness and Homemaking in Gabeba Baderoon’s Poetry
Nasseem Lallmahomed-Aumeerally
32. The Transatlantic Turn in Laila Lalami’s Migrant Writing
Ahmed Idrissi Alami
33. Postcolonial Diasporic Conjunctive Consciousness in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator
Lokangaka Losambe
B. Francophone Perspectives
34. Fatou Diome, Abdourahman Waberi, and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: Authors of French Expression Writing in and for “La Littérature-Monde”
Valérie K. Orlando
35. Extending the Boundaries of Fiction and Identity in Alain Mabanckou’s Black Bazar
Augustine H. Asaah
36. Calixthe Beyala’s Literary Work Travels North
Ylva Lindberg
37. Calixthe Beyala’s Your Name Shall Be Tanga: An African-Diasporic Anomaly
Christine Grogan
38. Politicizing the “Universal” of the African Diasporic Stage Space in France
Brian Valente-Quinn
Part III: Offshoots of the New Arrivants (Born and Growing in Diasporic Spaces)
A. Anglophone Perspectives
39. Who is Teju Cole? Or Is Teju Cole the Same as Julius?
Kenneth Harrow
40. Peace, Love, World: Helen Oyeyemi’s Peace Piece in Peaces
F. Fiona Moolla
41. Between Home and Away: Contemporary Black British Poetry
Jennifer Leetsch
42. Reading the New Diaspora in Yewande Omotoso’s Fiction
Christopher Ouma
B. Francophone and Lusophone
43. Marie NDiaye’s Un Temps de Saison: Native Hospitality and ‘Going Native’ in Rural France
Judith Still
44. Archives of Absence: Reconstituting Lives Asunder in Yara Monteiro’s “Essa Dama Bate Bué”
Daniel F. Silva
45. Curly Hair as an Identity Marker: From Angola to Portugal
Cornesha Tweede
46. Crossing and Uncrossing: African Diaspora in Joaquim Arena’s Reparative Writing
Patricia Martinho Ferreira
Index
Biography
Lokangaka Losambe is the Frederick M. and Fannie C.P. Corse Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He previously taught African, African Diaspora, and English literatures at universities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland, and South Africa. Dr. Losambe also served as the president of the African Literature Association (ALA) in 2012–2013.
Tanure Ojaide is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the UNC, Charlotte. He has published collections of poetry, novels, short stories, memoirs, and self-authored and co-authored scholarly books. Dr. Ojaide teaches and publishes on African Literature and Culture, the Folklore of Africa and the African Diaspora, and Globalization in African Poetry.
