Ernest N. Emenyonu – författare

This book looks at the trends in the development of the Igbo novel from its antecedents in oral performance, through the emergence of the first published novel, Omenuko, in 1933 by Pita Nwana, to the contemporary Igbo novel.Defining "Igbo literature" as literature in Igbo language, and "Igbo novel" as a novel written in Igbo language, the author argues that oral and written literature in African indigenous languages hold an important foundational position in the history of African literature. Focusing on the contributions of Igbo writers to the development of African literature in African languages, the book examines the evolution, themes, and distinctive features of the Igbo novel, the historical circumstances of the rise of the African novel in the pre-colonial, era and their impact on the contemporary Igbo novel. This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature, literary history, and Igbo studies.

The rapid upsurge of writing by African women has been one of the most dynamic, phenomenal trends of African literature at the end of the twentieth century.African women writers have come a long way since the 1960s when they were hardly acknowledged or noticed as serious writers. In the past four decades their works have been steadily rising in quantity and quality. Today these writers are seriously redefining images of womanhood, providing new visions, and reshaping erstwhile distorted characterizations of African women in fiction.ERNEST EMENYONU is Professor of the Department of Africana StudiesUniversity of Michigan-Flint.North America: Africa World Press; Nigeria: HEBN

Critics take stock of where African Literature has got to and where it is likely to go with the next generation of writers.Contributors to this volume ask what are the new directions of African literature? What should be the major concerns of writers, critics and teachers in the twenty-first century? What are the accomplishments and legacies? What gaps remain to be filled, and what challenges are there to be addressed by publishers and the book industry? What are the implications for pedagogy in the new technological era?ERNEST EMENYONU is Professor of the Department of Africana Studies University of Michigan-Flint.North America: Africa World Press; Nigeria: HEBN

How have African writers addressed the issue of war and its impact across the continent?Since the second half of the twentieth century, no single phenomenon has marred the image and development of Africa more than senseless fratricidal wars which rapidly followed the political independence of nations. This issue ofAfrican Literature Today is devoted to studies of how African writers, as historical witnesses, have handled the recreation of war as a cataclysmic phenomenon in various locations on the continent. The contributors explore the subject from a variety of perspectives: panoramic, regional, national and through comparative studies. War has enriched contemporary African literature, but at what price to human lives, peace and the environment? ERNESTEMENYONU is Professor of the Department of Africana Studies University of Michigan-Flint. The contributors include: CHIMALUM NWANKWO, CHRISTINE MATZKE, CLEMENT A. OKAFOR, INIBONG I. UKO, OIKE MACHIKO, SOPHIE OGWUDE, MAURICE TAONEZVI VAMBE, ZOE NORRIDGE and ISIDORE DIALA.Nigeria: HEBN

This issue of African Literature Today focuses on new novels by emerging as well as established African novelists.This is a seminal work that discusses the validity of the perception that the new generation of African novelists is remarkably different in vision, style, and worldview from the older generation. The contention is that the oldergeneration novelists who were too close to the colonial period in Africa had invariably made culture-conflict and little else their dominant thematic concern while the younger generation novelists are more versatile in their thematic preoccupations, and are more global in their vision and style. Do the facts in the novels justify and validate these claims? The 13 papers in this volume have been carefully selected to consider these issues.Brenda Cooper a renowned literary scholar from Cape Town writes on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, while Charles Nnolim writes about Adichie's more recent novel Half of a Yellow Sun; Omar Sougou of Universite GastonBerger, Senegal discusses 'ambivalent inscriptions' in Buchi Emecheta's later novels; Clement Okafor of the University of Maryland, addresses the theme of 'racial memory' in Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name, juxtaposed between the world of the old and the realities of the present. Joseph McLaren, Hofstra University, New York, discusses Ngugi's latest novel, Wizard of the Crow, while Machiko Oike, Hiroshima University, Japan looksat a new theme in African adolescent literature, 'youth in an era of HIV/AIDS'. There is abundant evidence of the contrasts and diversities which characterize the African novel not only geographically, but also ideologically andgenerationally.ERNEST EMENYONU is Professor of the Department of Africana Studies University of Michigan-Flint.Nigeria: HEBN

This book looks at the trends in the development of the Igbo novel from its antecedents in oral performance, through the emergence of the first published novel, Omenuko, in 1933 by Pita Nwana, to the contemporary Igbo novel.Defining "Igbo literature" as literature in Igbo language, and "Igbo novel" as a novel written in Igbo language, the author argues that oral and written literature in African indigenous languages hold an important foundational position in the history of African literature. Focusing on the contributions of Igbo writers to the development of African literature in African languages, the book examines the evolution, themes, and distinctive features of the Igbo novel, the historical circumstances of the rise of the African novel in the pre-colonial, era and their impact on the contemporary Igbo novel. This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature, literary history, and Igbo studies.

The success of the Caine Prize for African Writing and the growth of online publishing have played key roles in putting the short story in its rightful place within the study and criticism of African literature.African writers have, much more than the critics, recognized the beauty and potency of the short story. Always the least studied in African literature classrooms and the most critically overlooked genre in African literature today, the African short story is now given the attention it deserves. Contributors here take a close look at the African short story to re-define its own peculiar pedigree, chart its trajectory, critique its present state and examineits creative possibilities. They examine how the short story and the novel complement each other, or exist in contradistinction, within the context of culture and politics, history and public memory, legends, myths and folklore.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 universitiesNigeria: HEBN

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 ResolutionariesErnest 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 universitiesNigeria: HEBN

Contributors analyse the theories behind children's literature, its functions and cultural significance, and suggest the new directions this literature is taking in terms of its craft, themes and intentions.Africa's encounter with the West and its implications and consequences remain far-reaching and enduring in the craft and thrust of its creative writers. The contributors to ALT 33 analyse the connections between traditional stories and myths that have been told to children, as well as the work of contemporary creative writers who are writing for children in order that they understand this complex history. Some of these writers are developing traditional myths, folk tales, and legends and are writing them in new forms, while others focus on the encounter with the West that has dominated much modern African literature for adults.The previous neglect of the cultural significance, study, criticism and teaching of children's literature is addressed in this volume: How can the successes and/or failures of stories and story-telling for children in Africa be measured? Are there models to be followed and whatmakes them models? What is the relationship between the text and the illustration of children's books? What should guide the reader or critic of children's literature coming out of Africa - globalism, transculturality or internalregionalism? What problems confront teachers, students, publishers and promoters of children's books in Africa?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.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma HEBN: Nigeria

Imagined or actual returns to a "homeland" in African literature are examined in relation to changing concepts of identity, belonging, migration and space.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 thepresent, examine the extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of "home".GUEST EDITORS: HELEN COUSINS, Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Newman University, Birmingham, UK; PAULINE DODGSON-KATIYO, was formerly Head of English at Newman University, Birmingham, UK, and Dean of the School of Arts at Anglia Ruskin University.Series Editor: Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

A critical examination of the engaging voice and multiple stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on war, feminism, art, ideology, hair, complex human identities and the challenges of multicultural existence.Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with ingeniouscraftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with extravagant and versatile narrative innovations.Through her writings, she has made herself relevant topeople of all ages - across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her imaginativecreativity as they expand and define her mission as a writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay, giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in literary theory.Her contributionsto African, Diasporic and World literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of multicultural existence and complex human identities.Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.

As well as a rare examination of Egyptian literature, this volume includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles and a Literary Supplement.Creativity has flourished in Egypt, a historically important and strategically located North African country and a leading nation in the Arab world. The main focus in this volume is to examine Egyptian writers, especially those whose works have enriched African Literature through their depiction of historical, cultural and socio-political forces such as Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Tawfiq al-Hakim and Alifa Rifaat (Fatimah Rifaat). Writing in both Arabic and the English language, their thematic concerns have been as versatile as they have been controversial. Nawal El Saadawi provides a Foreword to the volume and an interview.This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles and a Literary Supplement.Volume Editor: Ernest N. EmenyonuSeries Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and abroad.Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema,to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output.This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement.Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara UniversitySeries Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and abroad.Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema,to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output.This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement.Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara UniversitySeries Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

Investigates what literary strategies African writers adopt to convey the impact of climate transformation and environmental change.This special issue examines the ways fiction and poetry engage with environmental consciousness, and how African literary criticism addresses the implications of global environmental transformations. Does environmentalist literature offer new possibilities for critical thinking about the future? What constitutes environmentalist fiction and poetry? What kind of texts, themes and topics does climate writing include? Does any text in which the environment features become available to environmentalist criticism? In their engagement with the diverse genres, themes and frameworks through which contemporary African writers address topics including urbanisation, cross-species communication, nature and climate change, contributors to this special issue help to define African environmental writing. They look at the literary strategies adopted by creative writers to convey the impact of environmental transformationin narratives that are historically informed by a century of colonialism, nationalist political activism, urbanisation and postcolonial migration. How does environmental literature intervene in these histories? Can creative writers, with their powerfully post-human and cross-species imaginations, carry out the ethical work demanded by contemporary climate science? From Tanure Ojaide's and Helon Habila's attention to environmental decimation in the Niger Delta through to Nnedi Okorafor's and Kofi Anyidoho's imaginative cross-species encounters, the special issue asks how literature mediates the specificities of climate change in an era of global capitalism and technological transformation, and what the limits of creative writing and literary criticism are as tools for discussing environmental issues.This volume also includes a Literary Supplement.Guest Editors: Cajetan Iheka (Associate Professor of English, Yale University) and Stephanie Newell (Professor of English, Yale University)Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)Reviews Editor:Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida)

AFRICAN LITERATURE TODAY was established at a time of uncertainty and reconstruction but for 50 years it has played a leading role in nurturing imaginative creativity and its criticism on the African continent and beyond.Contemporary African creative writers have confidently taken strides which resonate all over the world. The daring diversities, stylistic innovations and enchanting audacities which characterize their works across many different genres resonate with readers beyond African geographic and linguistic boundaries. Writers in Africa and the diaspora seem to be speaking with collective and individual voices that compel world attention and admiration. And they arebeing read in numerous world languages.This volume's contributors recognize the foundations laid by the pioneer African writers as they point vigorously to contemporary writers who have moved African imaginative creativityforward with utmost integrity, and to the critics who continue to respond with unyielding tenacity.The founding Editor of ALT, Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones, recalls in an interview in this volume, the role ALT played in the evolution and stimulation of a wave of African literary studies and criticism in mid-20th century: "The 1960s saw a good deal of activity among scholars teaching African Literature throughout Africa and the world, and this ledto a series of conferences in African Literature in Dakar, Nairobi, and Freetown.around the idea of communication between the various English Departments which took an interest in African Literature. We decided on a bulletin, which was just a kind of newsletter between departments saying what was going on....it was that bulletin that showed the potential of this kind of communication... after that we started African Literature Today as a journal inviting articles on the works of African writers." Contributors to the series demonstrate the impact of the growth in studies and criticism of African Literature in the 50 years since its founding.Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

A critical examination of the engaging voice and multiple stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on war, feminism, art, ideology, hair, complex human identities and the challenges of multicultural existence.Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with ingeniouscraftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with extravagant and versatile narrative innovations.Through her writings, she has made herself relevant topeople of all ages - across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her imaginativecreativity as they expand and define her mission as a writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay, giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in literary theory.Her contributionsto African, Diasporic and World literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of multicultural existence and complex human identities.

Investigates what literary strategies African writers adopt to convey the impact of climate transformation and environmental change.This special issue examines the ways fiction and poetry engage with environmental consciousness, and how African literary criticism addresses the implications of global environmental transformations. Does environmentalist literature offer new possibilities for critical thinking about the future? What constitutes environmentalist fiction and poetry? What kind of texts, themes and topics does climate writing include? Does any text in which the environment features become available to environmentalist criticism? In their engagement with the diverse genres, themes and frameworks through which contemporary African writers address topics including urbanisation, cross-species communication, nature and climate change, contributors to this special issue help to define African environmental writing. They look at the literary strategies adopted by creative writers to convey the impact of environmental transformationin narratives that are historically informed by a century of colonialism, nationalist political activism, urbanisation and postcolonial migration. How does environmental literature intervene in these histories? Can creative writers, with their powerfully post-human and cross-species imaginations, carry out the ethical work demanded by contemporary climate science? From Tanure Ojaide's and Helon Habila's attention to environmental decimation in the Niger Delta through to Nnedi Okorafor's and Kofi Anyidoho's imaginative cross-species encounters, the special issue asks how literature mediates the specificities of climate change in an era of global capitalism and technological transformation, and what the limits of creative writing and literary criticism are as tools for discussing environmental issues.Guest Editors: Cajetan Iheka (Associate Professor of English, Yale University) and Stephanie Newell (Professor of English, Yale University)Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida)

Explores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works.Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing. Recent discussions around the "rise of science-fiction and fantasy" in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O. Fagunwa's classic novel (1938) Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga), the mythopoeia of Elechi Amadi's The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian writing of Buchi Emecheta in The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining African classics such as Kojo Laing's Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) and the oeuvre of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The volume also critically examines modern African texts from writers including Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as critically looking at the terms 'Afrofuturism' and 'Africanfuturism' vis-à-vis their particular cultural aesthetics and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative arts.This volume also includes a Literary Supplement. Guest Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO (Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria).Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida).

Explores and interrogates the many and diverse perspectives of the new frontiers of African literary studies.Publication of the seminal volume African Literature Comes of Age, by C.D. Narasimhaiah (India) and Ernest N. Emenyonu (Nigeria), in 1988 generated the consciousness that African literature had attained maturity by the evolution of diverse concerns among scholars, critics, and researchers over the decades following the publication, in the English language, of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in 1958. Since the publication of the first volume of African Literature Today (ALT) in the 1970s, the writings of Africans across the continent have spread across the globe, constituting refreshing and hitherto unimaginable epistemologies. This 40th volume provides a serious critical response to those changing horizons and reflects African literature's maturity, diversity, scope, spread, and above all, relevance. The topics discussed range from sickle cell disease to the animalization of humans, new feminisms and stereotypes of womanhood, the different shades of black masculinity, and political exploitation in creative works. Reaching across boundaries, recent fictions are seen to suggest a widening of conventional literary genres, and new forms that change the known trajectories of dramatic theatre. The substance, freshness, and vitality that characterize the articles in this volume of African Literature Today bring a welcome perspective to the continent's rich creative life.Funded by the Knowledge Unlatched Select 2023 collection, this title is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons License: CC BY NC

Interrogates and explores African literature in African languages today, and the continuing interfaces between works in indigenous languages and those written in European languages or languages of colonizers.Sixty years after the Conference of African Writers of English Expression at Makerere University, the dominance in the global canon of African literatures written in European languages over those in indigenous languages continues to be an issue. This volume of ALT re-examines this central question of African literatures to ask, 'What is the state of African literatures in African languages today?' Contributors discuss the translation of Gurnah's novel Paradise to Swahili, and Osemwegie's Ọrọ Epic to English, and Wolof wrestlers' panegyrics. They analyse Edo eco-critical poetry, and the poetics of Igbo mask poetry, and morality in early prose fiction in indigenous Nigerian languages. Other essays contribute a semiotic analysis of Duruaku's A Matter of Identity, and the decolonization of trauma in Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them. Overall, the volume paints a complex image of African cultural production in indigenous languages, especially in the ways Africa's oral performance traditions remain resilient in the face of a seemingly undiminished presence of non-African language literary traditions.Funded by the Knowledge Unlatched Select 2024 collection, this title is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND.

Examines the state of African poetry today, the enduring influence of Africa's pioneer poets, today's new generation and their work in written poetry and in spoken word, continuing oral indigenous traditions.Almost half a century after ALT 6 and thirty-three years after ALT 16, what is the state of poetry and poetics in Africa? This volume of ALT highlights major developments and continuities in the practice of the art of poetry in the continent. Contributions analyse new frontiers in the traditional African epic and the Yoruba oríkì genre and innovations in form and theme, such as 'spoken word poetry' shared on digital media and pandemic poetry in the wake of COVID-19. They compare and contrast the work of Romeo Oriogun, Christopher Okigbo, and Gabriel Okara and of T.S. Eliot and Kofi Anyidoho. Other essays examine the complexities of translation from Ewe into English and the development of oral African poetry, underscoring its dynamism and the centrality of performance. The volume also includes interviews with poets Kofi Anyidoho, Kwame Dawes, and Kehinde Akano and tributes to Ama Ata Aidoo. Altogether, it highlights the richness and vibrancy of contemporary praxis and points to future directions in the field.

Examines the state of African poetry today, the enduring influence of Africa's pioneer poets, today's new generation and their work in written poetry and in spoken word, continuing oral indigenous traditions.Almost half a century after ALT 6 and thirty-three years after ALT 16, what is the state of poetry and poetics in Africa? This volume of ALT highlights major developments and continuities in the practice of the art of poetry in the continent. Contributions analyse new frontiers in the traditional African epic and the Yoruba oríkì genre and innovations in form and theme, such as 'spoken word poetry' shared on digital media and pandemic poetry in the wake of COVID-19. They compare and contrast the work of Romeo Oriogun, Christopher Okigbo, and Gabriel Okara and of T.S. Eliot and Kofi Anyidoho. Other essays examine the complexities of translation from Ewe into English and the development of oral African poetry, underscoring its dynamism and the centrality of performance. The volume also includes interviews with poets Kofi Anyidoho, Kwame Dawes, and Kehinde Akano and tributes to Ama Ata Aidoo. Altogether, it highlights the richness and vibrancy of contemporary praxis and points to future directions in the field.

What is the state of African creative fiction, African publishing, and African literary criticism in the first decades of the twenty-first century?This volume focusses on the nature and message of contemporary African imaginative creativity, examining literary works, narrative techniques, and innovations, as well as the nature and state of the criticism applied in analysis and interpretation. Inspired by Chinua Achebe's view of contemporary African Literature as a balance of stories between Africa and the West, contributors reflect on how writers have responded to this vision and moved the narrative of the continent forward into the arena of world literature. Articles on African Writing in the 21st Century: Medium as Message / New Landscapes of Otherness in Chika Unigwe's Better Never than Late / Postcolonial Hospitality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus / Pollution Make the Air Turn Black: Eco-Consciousness in Burna Boy's 'Whisky' and The Black River: Whiskey Documentary / Masculinities, Complicity, and Balance in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah / The African Grieving Story vs the European Grieving Framework: Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom Meets the Kubler-Ross Model / Quilting the Narrative of New Black Feminism: Reinventing Feminism with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Literary SupplementReviews

From Hollywood to Nollywood: this issue of African Literature Today examines the relationship between film and video and the literatures of Africa.A recent literary phenomenon in contemporary Africa is the developing relationship between film and African literature. ALT 28 focuses on the interface between film and literature in contemporary African writing and imagination. Contributors have examined the issue from a variety of perspectives: critiques of adaptations of African creative works into film, analyses of filmic structures in African dramatic literature, African writers as film makers, and the impact of the video film industry on literature and the reading culture in Africa.Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of the Department of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-FlintNigeria: HEBN

Brings together experiences of teachers of African literature from around the world in the context of technological change.Focuses on theoretical and pedagogical approaches to the teaching of African Literature on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. The publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in 1958 drew universal attention not only to contemporary African creative imagination, but also established the art of the modern African novel. In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and opened the 'gate' for other African writers. By the close of the 20th century, African Literature had gained world-wide acceptance and legitimacy in the academy and featured on the literature curriculum of schools and colleges across the globe.This specialissue of African Literature Today, examines the diverse experiences of teachers of African Literature across regional, racial, cultural and national boundaries. It explores such issues as student responses, productive pedagogical innovations, the impact of modern technology, case studies of online teaching, teaching Criticism of African Literature, and teaching African Literature in an age of multiculturalism. It is intended as an invaluable teacher's handbook and essential student companion for the effective study of African Literature.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 universitiesNigeria: HEBN