Evan M. Mwangi 
Africa Writes Back to Self [PDF ebook] 
Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality

The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong’o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels’ self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

Table of Content

Preface

Acknowledgments



Introduction: Writing Back to Self



1. Genealogies and Functions of Self-Reflexive Fiction



2. (En)countering Sex in the Nationalist Canon



3. Potentials and Pitfalls of National Language Literatures



4. Orature and Deconstructed Folklore



5. Politicized Palimpsests and Gendered Intertexts



6. Painted Metaphors: The Gendered Deployment of Visual Arts



7. Refiguring (Out) Queer Sexualities



8. Gendered Theoretical Recalibrations



Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

About the author

Evan Maina Mwangi is Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern University and the coauthor (with Simon Gikandi) of
The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945.