West Africa

Introduction

As empirical studies of literary production and consumption emerge into a critical field in African literature, bibliographic data can provide alternative and complementary datasets to already established modes such as syllabuses and questionnaires. For instance, in a recent online publication, “African Literature Is a Country”, Bhakti Shringarpure and Lily Saint (2020, https://africasacountry.com/2020/08/african-literature-is-a-country) examine works that are “regularly taught” in the “academic mainstream” and mentioned by “reading publics”. They were led to the conclusion that “only a few canonical works dominate the field”. While not resolving the problem of hyper-canonization, the bibliographic data presented here can point to a less dramatic proportionality between the canonical and noncanonical writings, if taken as a whole. Perhaps, because it focuses on publications on and in West Africa, the West Africa bibliographical listings can enable a picture of a more differing concern across a wider range of old and new, local and diasporic authors. This year, Ahmed Yerima and Chigozie Obioma have as much presence as Teju Cole and Helon Habila and, together, they register in the bibliography as much as Achebe or Adichie, for whom a degree of specialization is already being cultivated within the field. Bibliographic data can also highlight how pedagogical choices are different from scholarly choices; that is, how what works, and strategies for the selection of texts, in the classroom, may be different from the calculus of what gets published.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s endorsement of Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram by Isha Sesay as a “stark reminder of the great unfinished business of the 21^st century: equality for girls and women around the world” is apt and encompassing of the urgency and mission reflected by the creative writing section in this list. What defines the political work of the writings is at the level of personal and individual freedoms as opposed to national freedoms. Ben Okri’s The Freedom Artist, Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities, Tope Folarin’s A Particular Kind of Black Man and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, to name a few, all contribute in different ways to the growing sense of impatience with the unfinished business of the 21^st century through the embrace of an idyllic passion.

The African Poetry Book Series edited by Kwame S. N. Dawes and Chris Abani continue to be the platform for the emergence of powerful poetic voices. However, a niche is also being created by the Lagos/Ibadan publishers who are bringing forward fresh and elegant voices reminiscent of Tade Ipadeola’s The Sahara Testaments, the Kindle edition of which was published in 2019 as well.

The most striking feature of the criticism, either general or based on individual writers, is the absence of a unifying theme or a preponderant topic: from oral poetics through urban spaces, Afropolitanism to child trafficking, these concerns reflect a spread that cannot be reduced to the homogeneity of canonicity.