Emerging African Voices: A Study of Contemporary African Literatu ...

contributes to an updating of African literature or the ways in which these new writers reinscribe and refocus traditional African texts written by long-established writers like Achebe, Ngugi, Nwapa, and Coetzee. After consideration of the overall strength of their proposed chapters, the contributors were chosen based on the the degree to which their analyses offered new insights into how emerging writers were changing the face of African literature in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, this is most likely the reason for the imbalanced geographical representation in this volume, with the vast majority of the authors originating in West Africa.

Emerging African Voices examines nine contemporary writers whose works, written almost entirely in the colonial languages of English and French, in some way update and refocus African literature for the new century. The writers whose works are under discussion tackle some of the long-standing difficulties of the colonial project—assimilation, Manicheanism, and othering—in new ways while exposing the challenges and dysfunctions of a locale affected by globalization. It must be re-emphasized, however, that this study does not pretend to represent or speak for the literary output of the entire African continent in terms of geographical area, ethnicity, or language. Indeed, what one volume could accomplish such a complex task? In fact, with the exception of one chapter, all of the writers are from West Africa. Seven chapters are devoted to writers of Nigerian descent with the balance dedicated to writers from Senegal and South Africa. During the last sixty years, African literature has been dynamically shaped byAfrican history, especially the colonial exploits of Western nations. Through time the works of African writers have evolved from nice, conciliatory narratives about improvements brought to African countries through colonialism to novels celebrating national independence while condemning neocolonialism and bemoaning civil war. Writers have dealt with all sorts of themes from immigration and repatriation to exile and identity. Most recently, it seems, African writers have been examining the course and effects of globalization. Therefore, this sampling of analyses serves to open fresh and vital conversations about the works of new writers who are swiftly changing the look, feel, and sound of African literature.