ALT 32 Politics and Social Justice: African Literature Today

Examines some of the varied African literary responses to politics and social justice and injustice under colonialism/neocolonialism. In 1965, Chinua Achebe, in his classic essay "The Novelist as Teacher", declared that the "African past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the early Europeans acting on God's behalf, delivered them." That assertion included a still reverberating sentiment shared by many of the first generation of African writers that it is possible to reclaim that distorted past creatively in order to show and understand "where andwhen the rain started beating Africa". Many genres and forms of literary and cultural production have recalled and recorded and reconfigured that past - many projecting a new confident African future defined by self-determination. The spectrum of that complex engagement, which encompasses critical issues in politics and social justice, provides the basis of this volume, which concludes with tributes to the life and works of Kofi Awoonor. Articles on: Binyavanga Wainaina + Ben Okri & Nationhood + J.M. Coetzee & the Philosophy of Justice + Isidore Okpewho & "Manhood" + Ngugi's Matigari & the Postcolonial Nation + Politics & Women in Irene Salami's MoreThan Dancing + Ayi Kwei Armah's The Resolutionaries Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars from US, UK and African universities Nigeria: HEBN Frontcover Dedication to James Gibbs Contents Notes on Contributors EDITORIAL ARTICLE. Fiction & Socio-Political Realities in Africa: What Else Can Literature Do? ARTICLES The Novelas an Oral Narrative Performance: The Delegitimization of the Postcolonial Nation in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Matigari Ma Njiruungi Abiku in Ben Okri’sImagination of Nationhood: A Metaphorical Interpretation of Colonial-Postcolonial Politics Refracting the Political: Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Resolutionaries: Exoteric Fiction, the Common People & Social Change in Post-Colonial Africa – A Critical Review In Quest of Social Justice: Politics & Women’s Participation in Irene Isoken Salami’s More than Dancing Breaking the Laws in J.M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus: Philosophy & the Notion of Justice The Rhetoric & Caricature of Social Justice in Post-1960 Africa: A Logical Positivist Reading of Ngugı wa Thiongo’s Matigari ‘Manhood’ in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty: Authenticity or Accountability? REMEMBERING KOFI AWOONOR (13 MARCH 1935–21 SEPTEMBER 2013) Kofi Awoonor: In Retrospect Kofi Awoonor: Poem for a Mentor & Friend Looking Death in the Eye: The Human Condition, Morbidity & Mortality in Kofi Awoonor’s Poetry Eulogy for an Artist, a Statesman, a Teacher & Friend: Kofi Awoonor Post-Colonial Trauma & the Poetics of Remembering in the Novels of Kofi Awoonor Song for Nyidevu: For Afetsi, Who Survived to Tell REVIEWS Chima Anyadike and Kehinde A. Ayoola, eds, Blazing the Path: Fifty Years of Things Fall Apart Nana Ayebia Clarke and James Currey eds, Chinua Achebe: Tributes & Reflections François Guiyoba et Pierre Halen, eds. L’Impact des missions chrétiennes sur la constitution des champs littéraires locaux en Afrique Astrid Van Weyenberg. The Politics of Adaptation – Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy Taona D. Chiveneko, The Hangman’s Replacement Book 1: Sprout of Disruption Fagunwa, Daniel O. Forest of a Thousand Daemons, translated by Wole Soyinka, illustrated by Bruce Onabrakpeya Caroline Davies. Creating Postcolonial Literature: African Writers & British Publishers Wumi Raji. Contemporary Literature of Africa: Tijan M. Sallah & Literary Works of The Gambia This special issue focuses on literary texts by African writers in which the protagonist returns to his/her 'original' or ancestral 'home' in Africa from other parts of the world. Ideas of return - intentional and actual - have been a consistent feature of the literature of Africa and the African diaspora: from Equiano's autobiography in 1789 to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel 'Americanah'. African literature has represented returnees in a range of locations and dislocations including having a sense of belonging, being alienated in a country they can no longer recognize, or experiencing a multiple sense of place. Contributors, writing on literature from the 1970s to the present, examine the extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of 'home'. Articles on Nuruddin Farah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Pede Hollist, Ayi Kwei Amah, Dinaw Mengestu, Benjamin Kwakye. Interview with Tendai Huchu. Featured Articles by Bernth Lindfors, Eustace Palmer & Helen Chukwuma. Literary supplement : four poems by Tsitsi Ella Jaji