A New Generation of African Writers

Migration, Material Culture and Language
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-1-84701-507-5
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 431 g

Brenda Cooper examines the work of the new generation of African writers who have placed migration as central to their writing.

There is a new interest among publishers in New York and London in books by writers of African origin. These authors have often grown up or passed their early adult years out of Africa. The Orange Prize for Fiction was awarded inLondon 2007 to Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, and the Caine Prize for African Writing has introduced new writers such as Leila Aboulela, Biyi Bandele and Chimamanda Adichie herself to agents and publishers.
This examination of the extraordinary work which has recently appeared is therefore very timely. Migration is a central theme of much African fiction written in English. Here, Brenda Cooper tracks the journeys undertakenby a new generation of African writers, their protagonists and the solid objects that populate their fiction, to depict the material realities of their multiple worlds and languages. The book explores the uses to which the Englishlanguage is put in order to understand these worlds. It demonstrates how these writers have contested the dominance of colonising metaphors. The writers' challenge is to find an English that can effectively express their many lives, languages and identities.

BRENDA COOPER is Director of the Centre for African Studies and a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town.

Southern Africa(South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland): University of KwaZulu-Natal Press (PB]

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cooper, Brenda

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Migrations- & Minderheitenpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Multiple worlds, material culture & language
Virtual objects & parallel universes in Biyi Bandele's The Street
Everyday objects & translation in Leila Aboulela's The Translator & Coloured Lights
Science & power in Jamal Mahjoub's The Carrier
Words, things & subjectivity in Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles
Breaking gods & petals of purple in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus
An abnormal ordinary: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun
Conclusion: the rifle is not a penis