Abstract
Introduction
2011 saw continued attention to canonical West African writers. The Heinemann African Writers series reprinted Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths with a new introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Kojo Laing’s Sweet Second Country.
This year also saw some notable debut novels. Eustace Palmer, well known for his critical studies of African literature, published his first novel – A Tale of Three Women – an exploration of Sierra Leone Creole culture, spanning sixty years. For an interview with Palmer see <www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article5109> where he reflects on growing up in Freetown, studying at Edinburgh, teaching at Fourah Bay and in America, on the state of the African novel and on current conditions in Sierra Leone.
Published in the USA in 2010 and in the UK in 2011, Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segu’s Wives deals with polygamy in Nigeria. Shoneyin, Wole Soyinka’s daughter in law and a teacher in Abuja, already has an established reputation as a poet, but this is her first published novel. She discusses her work and polygamy in Nigeria in interviews at <www.african-writing.com/nine/lolashoneyin.html> and <www.huffingtonpost.com/lois-alter-mark/polygamy-secret-lives-wives_b_878753.html>. Her website <www.lolashoneyin.com/> is under development and includes a blog and picture gallery.
Another debut novel from the diaspora, Teju Cole’s Open City, was hailed by a New Yorker reviewer as “a beautiful, subtle and finally original novel” (<www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/02/28/110228crbo_books_wood>). The city of the title is New York, as seen through the eyes of a Nigerian-born doctor. Cole is a photographer and professional art historian as well as a writer.
Another debut novel from the diaspora is Under an Emerald Sky, a coming-of-age story of two Nigerian British girls. It is published by Linen Press, a new small press based in Edinburgh and devoted to publishing women authors with a number of African interest titles on its list.
Popular themes in fiction in this year’s West African fiction were coming of age (Olukemi Amala), political corruption, often in fictional states (Wilfrid Ndum Akombi Bangsi Mbuh, Jonathan Nshing, Tanniform Martin Wanki), and life in the diaspora (Akombi Cole, Stephen Kelman).
The winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for 2011 was Aminatta Fona with The Memory of Love (2010), which was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Nigerian Victor Idem was highly commended at the Commonwealth Short Story Competion. His story can be read at <www.commonwealthfoundation.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=LuJaasDsJkU%3d&tabid=880>.
Nigerian playwright Tess Onwueme was honoured with a named chair by the University of Wisconsin as the University Professor in Global Letters. She explains the significance of this and talks about her work in an interview with the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard (<www.vanguardngr.com/2011/07/my-work-is-larger-than-any-female-centred-ideology-prof-onwueme-3>).
Anglophone literature in Cameroon continues to grow, encouraged by the EduART Literary Awards for Cameroon Literature in English. EduART is a US-based organisation founded by Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang to promote the use of
creative and performing arts for socio-cultural awareness. For more information on the EduART Literary Awards see <www.eduartawards.org>. The 2011 Jane and Rufus Blanshard Award for Fiction went to Rosemary Ekossa for The House of Falling Women (published in 2008).
Bibliography
Poetry
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Ayuninjam, Funwi F. Voices from Africa and Beyond: A Collection of Poems 68pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
Doh, Emmanuel Fru Shadows 92pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
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Drama
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Isola, Akinwumi The Campus Queen in David Kerr ed African Theatre 10: Media & Performance James Currey (Woodbridge) pp116–39 [playscript].
Fiction
Affinnih, Oyindamola Two Gone … Still Counting 231pp Honeymix Productions (Nigeria) £7.99 [2010].
Akombi, Wilfrid Ndum A Dirty Game 186pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
— The Mother of My Child 162pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £16.95.
Alobwed’Epie, Charles She Seized the Balls 278pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £19.95.
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Bangsi, Francis Nji The Campaign Trail 122pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
Cole, Teju Open City 272pp Random House (New York) £20.99.
Diyen, Colin Husband Consultant 126pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
— Ring Road Safari 126pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
Kelman, Stephen Pigeon English 288pp Bloomsbury (London) £12.99.
Laing, Kojo Search Sweet Country 352pp Heinemann African Writers Series (London) £9.00 [first pub 1986].
Mbuh, Mbuh Tennu The Death of Asobo-Ntsi 280pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) $29.95.
Ndiyah, Florence Blessing 318pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £22.95.
Nshing, Jonathan Tim Twists and Turns: Tales of an African Intellectual 130pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedi The Shadow Speaker 352pp Jump at the Sun (USA) £6.99
Okpalaenwe, Elizabeth Ngozi The Power to Make a Choice 214pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £16.95.
Oyeyemi, Helen Mr Fox 277pp Picador (London) 277pp. £7.99.
Palmer, Eustace A Tale of Three Women xi + 226pp Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ) £14.99
Shoneyin, Lola The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives 256 pp Serpent’s Tail (London) 2011, £7.99
Wanki, Tanniform Martin The Weeping Triangle 242pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £18.95.
— Within the Walls of Hell 18 pp Langaa RPCIG (Bamenda) £15.95.
Criticism
General Studies
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“Dirge and Pessimism in Emerging Political Poetry in Nigerian Literature” Sule E. Egya and Elizabeth Odachi Onogwu Text and Theories pp143-52 [see
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“Imagining Beast: Images of the Oppressor in Recent Nigerian Poetry in English” Sule E. Egya Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46(2) pp345–358.
“Infraction and Change in the Nigerian Feminist Novel: Zaynab Alkali and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo” Sule E. Egya African Identities 9(1) pp101–111.
“Local Cosmopolitans in Colonial West Africa” Stephanie Newell Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46(1) pp103–17.
“Magical Realism in Contemporary Yoruba Novels” Lérè Adéyemi Text and Theories pp91–102 [see
“A Pact between the Writer and the Oral Performer in Political Engagement” Abdul Rasheed Na’Allah in Text and Theories pp35–40 [see
Publishing the Postcolonial: West African and Caribbean Writing in the UK 1950-1967 Gail Ching Liang Low 181pp Routledge (New York) £80.
“Remembering ‘Bitter Histories’: From Achebe to Adichie” Dennis Walder Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing Representation and Memory Routledge (New York and London) pp116–138.
Riddles and Bash: African Performance and Literature Reviews Chinenye Ce 148pp Handel Books (Nigeria) £18.95
Rituals in Cameroon Drama: A Semiological Interpretation of the Plays of Gilbert Doho, Bde Butake and Hansel Ndumbe Eyo Mforbe Perpetual Chaingong 228pp Thielmann and Breitinger, (Eckersdorf)) £16.95.
Shaken Wisdom: Irony and Meaning in Postcolonial African Fiction 178pp Univ of Virginia Press (Charlottesville) £19.99.
Text and Theories in Transition: Black African Literature and Imagined Transitions Charles Bodunde 249pp Thielmann and Breitinger (Eckersdorf).
Studies on Individual Writers
Abani, Chris “Chris Abani and the Politics of Ambivalence” Michael Omelsky Research in African Literatures 42(4) pp84–96.
Achebe, Chinua “Charting the Constellation: Past and Present in Things Fall Apart” Sofia Samatar Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp60–71.
— “Chinua Achebe and the Politics of Form” Nicholas Brown Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp87-90
— “Christianity as an Ideological Instrument: A Postcolonial Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God” African Journal of History and Culture 3(4) pp48-53.
— “Coming Together for Things Fall Apart: 1958–2008. Reflections on Reading Achebe Today” John Masterton English Studies on Africa 54(1) pp29-43.
— “History as Project and Source in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart” Emad Miromotahari Postcolonial Studies 14(4) pp373–85.
— “Homage to a Modern Literary Father” Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp vi-xv.
— “Making a Post-Eurocentric Humanity: Tragedy, Realism, and Things Fall Apart” Kwaku Larbi Korang Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp1-29.
— “Okonkwo, Textual Closure, Colonial Conquest” Adélékè Adéèko Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp72-86.
— “Self-writing and Existential Alienation in African literature: Achebe’s Arrow of God” Ato Quayson Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp30–45.
— “The Paddle That Speaks English: Africa, NGOs and the Archaeology of an Unease” Tejumola Olaniyan Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp46-59.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi “Adichie’s Genealogies: National and Feminine Novels” Susan Z. Andrade Research in African Literatures 42(2) pp91–101.
— “Producing Exile: Diasporic Vision in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun” Susan Strehle Modern Fiction Studies 57(4) pp650–72.
Akpan, Uwem “Say You’re One of Them: Uwem Akpan’s Collection of Short Stories” John Kearney English Studies in Africa 54(2) pp88–102.
Chukara, Lyn “Lyn Chukura and the New Feminist Poetic in Nigeria” James Tar Tsaaior Women’s Studies 40(1) pp48-69.
Darko, Amma “Writing about Germany: Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Webs” Pia Thielmann in Texts and Theories pp216-227 [see
Ezenwa-Ohaeta “African Poetry and the Masquerade Tradition: A Study of Ezenwa-Ohaeta’s The Voice of the Night Masquerade” Binta Fatima Ibrahim in Text and Theories pp54-61 [see
Habila, Helon “In Connivance with Nature: Inter-Faith Crisis and Ecological Depletion in Helon Habila’s Measuring Time” Senayon S. Olaoluwu English Studies in Africa 54(1) pp73–87.
— “Reforming Stereotypes: Modes of Mimicry in Helon Habila’s Measuring Time” Kerry Vincent Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47(1) pp42–51.
Ilaga Bena Nengi “Satire and the Emergent Nigerian Novel: A Study of Bena Nengi Ilaga’s Condolences” Jide Balogun in Texts and Theories pp184-95 [see
Irobi, Esiaba “Esiaba Irobi’s Legacy: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance” Isidore Diala Research in African Literatures 42(4) pp20–38.
Lasisis, Akeen “A Dirge for the Artist: Oral Transfer, Literary Canonisation and Socio-political Vision in Akeen Lasisis’s Ireoje Performance Poetry” Charles Bodunde Text and Theories pp41–53 [see
Olu Obafemi “Socio-semiotics in Olu Obafemi’s Scapegoats and Sacred Cows” Abimola Shittu in Texts and Theories pp132-39 [see
Okri, Ben “Navigating between Worlds: Ben Okri’s Abiku Child and the Oshogbo School of Art” Laura M. Smalligan Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46(2) pp359-75.
— “Representations of War and Peace in Selected Works of Ben Okri” Kayode Omoniyi pp180-94 in Narrating War and Peace in Africa Toyin Falola and Hetty ter Haar 328pp Univ of Rochester Press (Rochester, NY) [2010].
— “Teaching Ben Okri’s The Famished Road & Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar” Eustace Palmer pp1-26 in Teaching African Literature Today (29) ed Ernest N. Emenyonu 154pp James Currey (Woodbridge).
Osofiscin, Femi Olu Obafemi “Inter-textual Aesthetics in Femi Osofiscin’s Plays” Olu Obafemi in Texts and Theories pp121-31 [see
Soyinka, Wole “Punished Bodies in Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides and Morrison’s Beloved” Fethia el Hafi Journal of Black Studies 41(1) pp89-107 [2010].