Diaspora & Returns in Fiction

Description

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 the present, examine the extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of home. Contents Notes on Contributors Editorial Leaving Home/Returning Home: Migration & Contemporary African Literature • Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo & Helen Cousins Articles Alienation & Disorientation in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments • Julia Udofia Wait No Longer?: The Temporality of Return in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments • Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji ‘Our Relationship to Spirits’: History & Return in Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar • David Borman The ‘Rubble’ & the ‘Secret Sorrows’: Returning to Somalia in Nuruddin Farah’s Links & Crossbones • Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo Migration, Cultural Memory & Identity in Benjamin Kwakye’s The Other Crucifix • Helen Yitah & Michael P.K. Okyerefo No Place Like Home: Failures of Feeling & the Impossibility of Return in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears • James Arnett ‘The Backward Glance’: Repetition & Return in Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die • Sophia Akhuemokhan Negotiating Race, Identity & Homecoming in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah & Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die • H. Oby Okolocha The Problem of Return in 164the Local Gambian Bildungsroman • Stephen Ney Returns ‘Home’: Constructing Belonging in Black British Literature – Evans, Evaristo & Oyeyemi • Helen Cousins ‘Zimbabweanness Today’: An Interview with Tendai Huchu • Helen Cousins & Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo Featured Articles Remembering Early Issues of African Literature Today • Bernth Lindfors African Literature Today: Its History, Story, Impact & Continuing Journey • Eustace Palmer On African Literature Today • Helen Chukwuma Literary Supplement 4 Poems by Tsitsi Ella Jaji Reviews Eds Xavier Garnier & Pierre Halen, Littératures africaines et paysage • Francoise Ugochukwu Mukoma wa Ngugi, Mrs. Shaw (A Novel) • Obi Nwakanma Elleke Boehmer, The Shouting in the Dark • Obi Nwakanma Ernest Emenyonu, Princess Mmaeyen and Other Stories • Jasper A. Onuekwusi Dayo Olopade, The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa • Pelumi Folajimi