The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature

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.

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