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
Table of Content
Editorial Article: Leaving Home/Returning Home: Migration & Contemporary African Literature – Helen Cousins
Editorial Article: Leaving Home/Returning Home: Migration & Contemporary African Literature – Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo
Alienation & Disorientation in Ayi Kwei Armah’s
Fragments – Julia Udofia
Wait No Longer? The Temporality of Return in Ayi Kwei Armah’s
Fragments – Amanda 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
Migration, Cultural Memory & Identity in Benjamin Kwakye’s
The Other Crucifix – Michael P K O 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 – Sophie 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 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 and Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo
Featured Articles by Bernth Lindfors, Eustace Palmer & Helen Chukwuma
Literary Supplement – Four Poems by Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Reviews, Edited by Obi Nwakanma
About the author
H. Obiageli Okolocha is a Professor of African Literature, Theory and Gender Studies in the Department of English and Literature, University of Benin, Nigeria.
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