The extroverted African novel and literary publishing in the twenty-first century

Suhr-Sytsma, Nathan

doi:10.1080/13696815.2017.1400953

Cited by 21 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 29 publications

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“…As documented elsewhere, African literary markets have attracted both local and international publishers, despite structural challenges such as underdeveloped infrastructure, limited book reading cultures and education-oriented consumer priorities (e.g. Currey 2008;Davis 2013;Jay and Kelly 2002;Kamau and Mitambo 2016;Suhr-Sytsma 2018). As exemplified by Flora Nwapa, publishers have often been transnational, catering to local as well as international audiences.…”

Section: Digital Revival Of Tana Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Invoking Flora Nwapa: Nigerian women writers, femininity and spirituality in world literature

Uimonen

2020

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By invoking Flora Nwapa, this monograph draws attention to Nigerian women writers in world literature, with an emphasis on femininity and spirituality. Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966) was the first internationally published novel in English by a female African writer. With the establishment of Tana Press in 1977, Flora Nwapa also became the first female publisher in Africa. Although Flora Nwapa has been recognized as the ‘mother of modern African literature’, she is not sufficiently acknowledged in world literary canons or world literature studies, which is something this monograph aspires to redress, with the help of earlier studies, especially Nigerian scholarship. Drawing on the Efuru@50 celebration in Nigeria in 2016, this book explores the revival of Flora Nwapa’s fame as the pioneer of African women’s literature. Using an ethnographic rather than biographical approach, it captures Flora Nwapa’s literary practice in the context of the Nigerian literary scene and its interlinkages with world literature. The ethnographic portrayal of Flora Nwapa is complemented with an exposé of a select number of contemporary Nigerian women writers, based on interviews during fieldwork in Nigeria. The book uses concepts like creolized aesthetics and womanist worldmaking to advance scholarly understandings of world literature, which is conceived here as a pluriverse of aesthetic worlds. Exploring experimental ethnographic writing, the book combines the genres of creative non-fiction, descriptive ethnography and scholarly analysis, in an effort to make the text more accessible to academic as well as non-academic readers. Through travel notes the experience of fieldwork is shared in a candid manner. Detailed ethnography from the Efuru@50 literary festival is presented to show the expansion of Flora Nwapa’s fame. In-depth analyses of Flora Nwapa’s literary works and the cultural context of her literary practice cover a wide range of themes, from feminine storytelling and children’s literature, to publishing and digitalization. The theoretical discussion draws on anthropological, literary and African womanist theory to contextualize and explore the central themes of femininity and spirituality in world literature. Inspired by the social change perspective of African womanism and critical decolonial theory, the book makes a contribution to current efforts to explore a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world of many worlds. Paying close attention to gender complementarity and sacred engagements in Flora Nwapa’s literary worldmaking, it shows how world literature can help us create other possible worlds of human, spiritual and environmental coexistence.

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Section: Digital Revival Of Tana Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Invoking Flora Nwapa: Nigerian women writers, femininity and spirituality in world literature

Uimonen

2020

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African Literature and the CIA

Davis

2020

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During the period of decolonisation in Africa, the CIA covertly subsidised a number of African authors, editors and publishers as part of its anti-communist propaganda strategy. Managed by two front organisations, the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Farfield Foundation, its Africa programme stretched across the continent. This Element unravels the hidden networks and associations underpinning African literary publishing in the 1960s; it evaluates the success of the CIA in secretly infiltrating and influencing African literary magazines and publishing firms, and examines the extent to which new circuits of cultural and literary power emerged. Based on new archival evidence relating to the Transcription Centre, The Classic and The New African, it includes case studies of Wole Soyinka, Nat Nakasa and Bessie Head, which assess how the authors' careers were affected by these transnational networks and also reveal how they challenged, subverted, and resisted external influence and control.

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Forms of Interreligious Encounter in Contemporary Nigerian Fiction

Suhr-Sytsma¹

2022

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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Africanist scholars continue to debate how best to frame Christian-Muslim encounters. Examining literary fiction that portrays interreligious conflict and dialogue in northern Nigeria, Suhr-Sytsma opens up an exchange between social scientists and Nigerian writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Uwem Akpan, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, and E. E. Sule. Suhr-Sytsma argues that, as social thinkers, Nigerian writers explore interreligious solidarity through forms of doubling and critique forms of sacrifice that authorize scapegoating. Consequently, contemporary Nigerian fiction raises fundamental questions not only about the relation of text to reality but also about the making and crossing of boundaries identified as religious.

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The extroverted African novel and literary publishing in the twenty-first century

Cited by 21 publications

References 29 publications

Invoking Flora Nwapa: Nigerian women writers, femininity and spirituality in world literature

Invoking Flora Nwapa: Nigerian women writers, femininity and spirituality in world literature

African Literature and the CIA

Forms of Interreligious Encounter in Contemporary Nigerian Fiction

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