{"id":100110,"date":"2017-10-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=100110"},"modified":"2017-10-23T12:06:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T11:06:20","slug":"new-african-literature-is-disrupting-what-western-presses-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/new-african-literature-is-disrupting-what-western-presses-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"New African Literature Is Disrupting What Western Presses Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie after a reading of her book \u2018Americanah\u2019 in Lagos in 2013. Akintunde Akinleye \/Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Oct 207 – <\/em>African literature is the object of immense international interest across both academic and popular registers. Far from the field\u2019s earlier, post-colonial association with marginality, a handful of star \u201cAfropolitan\u201d names are at the forefront of global trade publishing.<\/p>\n

Books like Chimamanda Adichie\u2019s \u201cAmericanah\u201d<\/a> and \u201cHalf of a Yellow Sun\u201d<\/a>, Teju Cole\u2019s \u201cOpen City\u201d<\/a>, Taiye Selasi\u2019s \u201cGhana Must Go\u201d<\/a> and Yaa Gyasi\u2019s \u201cHomegoing\u201d<\/a> have confounded neat divisions between Western and African literary traditions. The Cameroonian novelist Imbolo Mbue captured a million-dollar contract<\/a> for her first book, \u201cBehold the Dreamers\u201d<\/a>. That\u2019s even before it joined the Oprah\u2019s Book Club<\/a> pantheon this year.<\/p>\n

Such commercial prominence, though, has attracted considerable and unsurprising push back from Western and Africa-based critics alike. Far from advancing narratives with deep roots in local African realities, such critics fear, many of Africa\u2019s most \u201csuccessful\u201d writers hawk a superficial, overly diasporic, or even Western-focused vision of the continent.<\/p>\n

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Noviolet Bulawayo was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2013 for her book. Olivia Harris\/Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

The most visible of these critiques has been directed at the Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo\u2019s \u201cWe Need New Names\u201d<\/a> (2013). The Nigerian novelist Helon Habila worried in a review in the London Guardian that it was \u201cpoverty-porn\u201d<\/a>. The popular Nigerian critic Ikhide Ikheloa (\u201cPa Ikhide\u201d) frequently makes a similar point<\/a>. Fellow Nigerian writer Adaobi Nwaubani<\/a> critiqued the West\u2019s hold on Africa\u2019s book industry in a much-circulated New York Times piece<\/a> called \u201cAfrican Books for Western Eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such debates about African writing could, and likely will, go on forever. Questions about Africa\u2019s place in the current global literary marketplace broaden some of the most urgent queries of the postcolonial era. Who gets to document African realities? Who are the \u201cgatekeepers\u201d of African publishing traditions?<\/p>\n

It goes on: To what sort of audience does African writing cater? What is the role \u2013 and what should it be, if any \u2013 of Western institutions in brokering cultural prestige?<\/p>\n

All these issues merit concern.<\/p>\n

Between the default poles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too often, though, African writing ends up volleyed between two default poles of \u201ccorporate global\u201d and \u201cactivist local\u201d. Some onlookers, as in a recent essay<\/a> by the Canadian scholar Sarah Brouillette, go as far as to name the biases of even Africa-based print outlets. Kenya\u2019s Kwani Trust<\/a> is exposed as \u201cWestern-facing\u201d due to a web of donor relations. \u201cWest\u201d here is code for neoliberal. \u201cWestern-facing\u201d is for complicity with a market that skews toward British and American interests.<\/p>\n

Faced with a \u201cworld system\u201d argument like Brouillette\u2019s, African literature would seem trapped between a rock and a hard place.<\/p>\n

But, in fact, this tells only a small part of the story of how African writing now makes its way through the world. It is incomplete to the point of being outdated, given the boom over the past five years in new, globally conscious small US literary presses collaborating with African writers.<\/p>\n

A \u201cWest subsuming Africa\u201d brand of critique works fine for scholars with no real skin in the game of literary publishing. It also denies real agency to a lot of African writers and other literary professionals. On the ground the literary field is far more forward-thinking and diverse.<\/p>\n

There is an entire new body of African writing that escapes this closed circuit of damning truisms. A wave of new or recently galvanised independent literary presses in the US and the UK are working in tandem with some of Africa\u2019s most generative outlets. Together they are publishing and promoting work by young and adventurous African writers.<\/p>\n

Labours of love<\/strong><\/p>\n

Books published originally by presses like Umuzi<\/a> (South Africa), amaBooks<\/a> (Zimbabwe) and Kwani (Kenya) find second lives with international publishers working to defy the constraints of profitability. They\u2019re mostly labours of love with skeleton staffs that speak to a transcontinental commitment to innovative African writing.<\/p>\n

Here are a few key examples of African texts published by independent American outlets \u2013 \u201cindependent\u201d here refers to presses beyond the \u201cBig Five\u201d US trade publishers (Hachette Book Group<\/a>, HarperCollins<\/a>, Macmillan<\/a>, Penguin Random House<\/a> and Simon and Schuster<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These include Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi\u2019s<\/a> Ugandan epic \u201cKintu\u201d<\/a> which was originally launched by Kwani. It was the first Anglophone novel put out by the brand-new Transit Books<\/a> based in Oakland, California. The press seeks maximum visibility for translated fiction alongside texts originally written in English. They advocate for more ethical legal and financial dealings with translators, as well as international writers.<\/p>\n

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Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila. Marc de Gouvenain<\/p><\/div>\n

A number of similarly tiny, ambitious ventures have published some of the most acclaimed recent African writing in translation. Deep Vellum Publishing<\/a> was behind the English translation of Fiston Mwanza Mujila\u2019s Etisalat Prize-winning \u201cTram 83\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also dedicated exclusively to works in translation, LA-based Phoneme Media<\/a> in 2016 published the first ever Burundian novel in English, Roland Rugero\u2019s<\/a> deeply contemplative \u201cBaho!\u201d<\/a>. Phoneme\u2019s tagline, fittingly, is \u201ccurious books for curious people\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, Brooklyn\u2019s Restless Books<\/a> was founded to combat \u201cparochial, inward-looking, and homogenised trends in American publishing\u201d. Among their forthcoming titles, translated from the French is Naivo\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Rice Fields\u201d<\/a>. It\u2019s the first novel from Madagascar to see its way to English.<\/p>\n

Veteran nonprofit press Archipelago Books<\/a> is also in Brooklyn. In 2015, it published the translation from the Portuguese of Angolan writer Jose Eduardo Agualusa\u2019s \u201cA General Theory of Oblivion\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Every one of these throws a wrench in a clear, cynical sense of what kind of novel Western presses prize. That is not to mention the many African writers, publishers, and editors working in concert to promote these same texts.<\/p>\n

Small, focused channels<\/strong><\/p>\n

It applies to the Anglosphere too. Books that offer a decidedly more locally textured experience than those of the \u201cAfropolitan\u201d rock stars have made their way abroad through small, focused channels.<\/p>\n

These works might include Tendai Huchu\u2019s \u201cThe Maestro, the Magistrate, and the Mathematician\u201d<\/a> (published originally by amaBooks, and in the US by Ohio University Press); Imraan Coovadia\u2019s \u201cTales of the Metric System\u201d<\/a> (from Umuzi, and again by Ohio University Press); and Masande Ntshanga\u2019s \u201cThe Reactive\u201d<\/a> (also Umuzi; in the US by family-run Two Dollar Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clearly, this collection just scratches the surface. But what these works have in common is an investment in stylistic and structural experimentation that confounds rather than caters to an international taste for \u201cdigestible\u201d fiction, or to mostly Western points of cultural and institutional reference.<\/p>\n

This counter-current of transnational African literary life complicates the equation of culture, geopolitics and economics in more useful ways than stale materialist critiques.<\/p>\n

As such titles and presses continue to gain acclaim and recognition by an international readership that is aware of and hostile to shallow representations of Africa \u2013 and who crave engagement with challenging fiction, regardless of its origin \u2013 critics will need to rethink some of their orthodoxies.<\/p>\n

There is more to both African literature and Western publishing than meets an eye too practised in its suspicion. If literature is doomed only to echo the failings of globalisation, then why bother? On the contrary, a new generation of writers and publishers deserve our awareness of the \u201cglobal literary marketplace\u201d as a meaningfully multidimensional space.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jeanne-Marie Jackson <\/a>– Assistant Professor of World Anglophone Literature, Johns Hopkins University <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Republish <\/em>The Conversation articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons license.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a thriving counter-current of transnational African literary life that confounds rather than caters to an international taste for “digestible” fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}