"This volume of critical essays uncovers vast reserves of creative talent in the new wave of African writing produced during the first decade of the twenty-first century by a group of young, well-educated, and globally literate men and women, such as Chimamanda Adichie, Chris Abani, Helon Abila, Fatou Diome, Helen Oyeyemi, and Phaswane Mpe...Collectively, the essays in this book capture the exciting energy of the emergent writing in rigorous analyses of selected texts, drawing on historical, comparative, and theoretical insights to provide a fresh perspective demanded by the new literature. The volume opens up a realm of artistry that illuminates the recurring and changing aspects of African life in a globally connected world at the dawn of a new century." - Tuzyline Jita Allan,Professor of English, Baruch College

Walter P. Collins, III, is assistant dean of students and associate professor at the University of South Carolina. He holds a PhD from the University of South Carolina, an MA from University of North Carolina, and a BA from Wake Forest University.

About the Contributors

R. Victoria Arana is professor of English at Howard University, where she teaches contemporary British literature including ‘black’ British writers, postcolonial theory, and advanced writing courses. She is a graduate of Vassar College, Princeton, and the George Washington University. Her most recent publications include Black Travel Writing (2004), Black British Writing (2004, pbk. 2009), ‘Black’ British Aesthetics Today (2007), World Poetry from 1900 to the Present (2008), and W. H. Auden’s Poetry: Mythos, Theory and Practice (2009). She served as a judge for the 2005 Caine Prize for African Literature (U.K.). She has written extensively for and edited the Dictionary of Literary Biography’s (Vol. 347) Twenty-First-Century ‘Black’ British Writers (2009) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

David Cockley is a lecturer in contemporary literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed his PhD at Texas A&M University and is currently working on a book focusing on literary responses to transnational terrorism.

Katherine Farley Galvagni is a recent graduate of the French Department at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York where she received her PhD. She earned her MA from Wake Forest University and her BA from The College of Charleston. Dr. Galvagni is the author of The Use of African and Caribbean Francophone Literature to Teach Culture.

Veronica C. Hendrick is an assistant professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). Her work primarily focuses upon contemporary writers, with a special emphasis on the intersection of literature and kaw. She has written and presented on the Native American experience, indentured servitude, and slavery and the law in modern American novels. Her book, Servants, Slaves, and Savages: Reflections of Law in American Literature, is forthcoming from Carolina Academic Press.

Timothy Johns is an assistant professor of world literature and film at Murray State University. He received his PhD from Stony Brook University (SUNY), an MA from San Francisco State, and a BA from Oberlin College. His work has recently appeared in the Journal of the African Literature Association, Atlanikos, and the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. “The Price of Pleasure,” an essay on sex and economics in the contemporary South African novel, is forthcoming as a chapter in Masculinities in African Literary and Cultural Texts.

Dik Okoro, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is the author of two collections of poetry, including Dance of the Heart, and the editor of three anthologies, most recently Speaking for the Generation: Contemporary Short Stories from Africa (forthcoming Africa World Press, 2009). Dr. Okoro received his MA and MFA degrees from Chicago State University, and his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. He is a professor of English at Olive-Harvey College, Chicago.

Akinola Oriola was a research fellow in the Department of African-American Studies at Syracuse University. He earned his PhD, MA, and BA from University of Ibadan, Ibadan-Nigeria. Dr. Oriola has authored and co-authored three books read by thousands of people across the globe and many scholarly publications in journals of his area of studies including in the Journal of African Literature.

Alexandra Schultheis is associate professor of postcolonial literatures and theory at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is the author of Regenerative Fictions: Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis, and the Nation as Family (2004) as well as essays in Twentieth Century Literature, Jouvert, Genders, Feminist Teacher, The Peace Review, South Asian Review, and several edited collections. Her current projects include two coedited volumes, with Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, on human rights and literature (theoretical and pedagogical perspectives) and a monograph on 'Transcultural Tibet' in contemporary literature and culture.

Pauline Ada Uwakweh is an assistant professor of literature at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. She received her PhD from Temple University, Philadelphia, MA from University of Calabar, Nigeria, and her BA from University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Dr. Uwakweh has published articles on African women writers. Some of her work appears in Research in African Literatures, African Literature Today, Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, and Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo.

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Global Specters: Child Soldiers in the Post-National Fiction of Uzodinma Iweala and Chris Abani (Alexandra Schultheis)

Chapter 2: “Breaking Gods”: The Narrator as Revelator and Critic of the Postcolonial Condition in Purple Hibiscus (Pauline Ada Uwakweh)

Chapter 3: Negotiating Nigeria: Connecting Chris Abani’s GraceLand to Africa’s Past (Veronica C. Hendrick)

Chapter 4: Fatou Diome’s Black Atlantic: Re-inscribing Anti-Imperialism (Katherine Farley Galvagni)

Chapter 5: Helon Habila’s Neoliberal Nigeria: Free Markets and Subordinate Cultures in Waiting for an Angel (David Cockley)

Chapter 6: The Novel Architecture of Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (Timothy Johns)

Chapter 7: The Allegory of Self and Other in Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel and Kunle Okesipe’s Professor’s Last Death (Akinola Oriola)

Chapter 8: Ogaga Ifowodo and the Oral Tradition: An Analysis of Form and Socio-political Issues in Madiba (Dik Okoro)

Chapter 9: Fresh “Cultural Critiques”: The Ethnographic Fabulations of Adichie and Oyeyemi (R. Victoria Arana)

Notes

Contributors

Index