Foundational African Writers (eBook)

A collection of essays celebrating the centenaries of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all born in South Africa in 1919. These foundational writers produced fiction, criticism, journalism and life writing, and their oeuvres are crucial to the genealogies of modern African and diasporic black literature.

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The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. These foundational writers produced more than a half-century of writing and cultural production spanning criticism, editorials, essays, fiction, journalism, life writing and orature. The essays in the collection showcase these writers’ multifaceted engagements and generative insights on a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, the language question, tradition, gender, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism and decolonisation. A number of political and thematic threads cut across the essays, including those that explore the significance of the ‘colour line’, the role of education and cultural practices amidst the unfolding of colonial modernity, state racism and print culture in South Africa and elsewhere. Foundational African Writers examines the ways in which the centenarians’ legacies still resonate in the present and how the body of work that they produced is crucial to the genealogies and institutions of modern African and diasporic black arts and letters. Studying their works revisits established debates, provokes possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement with the imperatives of decolonisation and opens up new trajectories for future scholarship. The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. All four centenarians lived rich and diverse lives across several continents. In the years following the Second World War they produced more than half a century of foundational creative writing and literary criticism, and made stellar contributions to institutions and repertoires of African and black arts and letters in South Africa and internationally. As a result, their oeuvres present multifaceted engagements and generative insights into a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, culture, identity, class, the language question, tradition, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism, and decolonisation. The range of the centenarians’ imaginations, critical analyses and social interventions spanned disciplinary divides. This volume, in the same spirit, draws on approaches that are equally transdisciplinary. Two aims thread through the contributors’ reflections on the complexities of black existence and of intellectual and cultural life in the twentieth century. The first is the exploration of some of the centenarians’ key texts and cultural projects that shaped their legacies. In doing so, the volume contributors trace a number of divergent intellectual and aesthetic lineages in their works and organisational activities. The second aim is a consideration of the ways in which these foundational writers’ legacies continue to resonate today, confirming their status as crucial contributors to modern African and diasporic black arts and letters.