Short description:

This ground-breaking book focuses on the dynamic interplay between language and identity in postcolonial Anglophone African literature. It examines how African writers navigate and reshape linguistic/literary landscapes to articulate unique cultural experiences and resist neo-colonial legacies. The authors highlight the dynamics of sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies in the ever-evolving 21st century African and postcolonial contexts, and shed light on conceptions of African identities and humanity. The book contributes to postcolonial discourses and suggests new ways of reading changing textual practices, as well as providing important sites to rebuke differentiation politics at play between the Global South and North. The volume also illuminates intertextual conversations that will be insightful for other disciplines in the humanities. It will function as an important reference for scholars and students of languages, communication and media, Global South literatures, postcolonial African literary and cultural studies, and African philosophies and concepts. Whether one is an academic or a curious reader, this book promises to offer compelling insights and fascinating narratives that together enrich present-day understanding of the vibrant and evolving world of Anglophone African literature.

Esther Mavengano is a lecturer who teaches Linguistics and Literature in the Department of English and Media Studies, Faculty of Arts at Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Literary studies obtained from North West University in South Africa. She is a Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, College of Human Sciences, UNISA, South Africa and she is currently a Georg Forster/ Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at TU (Technische Universität Dresden) in the Department of English, Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies, Institute of English and American Studies, Dresden, Germany.

Isaac Mhute is Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture Studies at Midlands State University, Zimbabwe and Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Long description:

This ground-breaking book focuses on the dynamic interplay between language and identity in postcolonial Anglophone African literature. It examines how African writers navigate and reshape linguistic/literary landscapes to articulate unique cultural experiences and resist neo-colonial legacies. The authors highlight the dynamics of sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies in the ever-evolving 21st century African and postcolonial contexts, and shed light on conceptions of African identities and humanity. The book contributes to postcolonial discourses and suggests new ways of reading changing textual practices, as well as providing important sites to rebuke differentiation politics at play between the Global South and North. The volume also illuminates intertextual conversations that will be insightful for other disciplines in the humanities. It will function as an important reference for scholars and students of languages, communication and media, Global South literatures, postcolonial African literary and cultural studies, and African philosophies and concepts. Whether one is an academic or a curious reader, this book promises to offer compelling insights and fascinating narratives that together enrich present-day understanding of the vibrant and evolving world of Anglophone African literature.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1. Postcolonial Anxieties: Shifting Sociolinguistic and cultural landscapes in Anglophone African Literary Writings.- Chapter 2. Sociolinguistic intricacies: Reflections on matrices of coloniality and current struggles in postcolonial African Anglophone literature.- Chapter 3. Re(dis)covering postcolonial voices and audiences. [Mis-]-Representation and postcoloniality in Chenjerai Hove?s ?experimentation? with language in Bones (1988).- Chapter 4. Reclaiming spiritual identity through Anglophone African literature: A literary perspective.- Chapter 5. Traumatic Narrative of Colonial Excesses in Ngugi wa Thiong?o?s Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir.- Chapter 6. Exploration of Language and Nationalism in The Lion and the Jewel, Things Fall Apart and I Will Marry When I Want.- Chapter 7. Problematising the ?Janus-faced? nature of writing African literature in English in contemporary Zimbabwean historical novels.- Chapter 8. Transcending Borders in Postcolonial Anglophone Literature: Navigating the Shifting Sociolinguistic Landscapes of Mbolo Mbue?s Behold the Dreamers.- Chapter 9. Crossing Cultural, Borders: Language and Intercultural Communication in Contemporary Anglophone African Literature.- Chapter 10. Representation of identities and the Third Space of Enunciation in Mphuthumi Ntabeni?s Transnational novel, The Wanderers.- Chapter 11. Transnational lives, language complexities and displacement in the diaspora: A case of The Eternal Audience of One by Remy Ngamije.- Chapter12. Linguistic politics and nation-building in contemporary Ghana: Re-engaging the debate on African literary writings.- Chapter 13. Language as Cartographic: How Petina Gappah maps the city in Rotten Row.- Chapter 14. Alterity and Belonging: A Reading of Bessie Head?s Post-Colonial Short Fiction.- Chapter 15. (Re) construction of Gender in Postcolonial literary writing: The Processes of Youth Identity formation in the Contemporary Kenyan Society.