ALT 39
Title Details

276 Pages

21.6 x 14 cm

Series: African Literature Today

Series Vol. Number: 39

Imprint: James Currey

ALT 39

Speculative & Science Fiction

Series edited by Ernest N. Emenyonu

Guest editor Louisa Uchum Egbunike and Chimalum Nwankwo

  • Description
  • Contents
  • Author
  • Reviews
Explores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works.

Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing. Recent discussions around the "rise of science-fiction and fantasy" in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O. Fagunwa's classic novel (1938) Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga), the mythopoeia of Elechi Amadi's The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian writing of Buchi Emecheta in The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining African classics such as Kojo Laing's Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) and the oeuvre of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The volume also critically examines modern African texts from writers including Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as critically looking at the terms 'Afrofuturism' and 'Africanfuturism' vis-à-vis their particular cultural aesthetics and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative arts.

This volume also includes a Literary Supplement.

Guest Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO (Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria).

Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida).
EDITORIAL ARTICLE
Introduction: Science & Speculative Fiction - What is Past and Present . . . and What is Future?
LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE and CHIMALUM NWANKWO

ARTICLES
'Being very human in one of the most inhuman cities in the world': Lagos as a Site of Africanfuturist Invasion in Lagoon and Godhunter
JANELLE RODRIQUES

Southern Africannearfutures: black-tech, ambivalence, and speculation in Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift and Masande Ntshanga's Triangulum
JEFFREY G. DODD

Woman of the Aeroplanes and the Prediction of the Future
CHUKWUNONSO EZEIYOKE

Re-membering the Past: Black Panther, Sovereignty, and the Cultural Politics of Africanfuturism
KAYODE ODUMBONI

African Counter-utopias: from Counter-narratives to the Presentification of Alternative Worlds
ERIC TSIMI

Shifting the Frame: Re-imagining Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God as Speculative Narratives
CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI

Contemporary Ugandan Speculative Fiction: A Passing Fad or an Emerging Canon?
EDGAR NABUTANYI

Moving the Centre: Positions and Locations of African Speculative Fiction
JAMES ORAO

FEATURE ARTICLE
Reimagining Transracial Intimacy: The Cartography of Decolonial Love in Leila Aboulela's Something Old, Something New' and Tomi Adeaga's 'Marriage and Other Impediments'
GABRIEL BAMGBOSE

INTERVIEWS

With Chigozie Obioma
LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE

With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
KADIJA GEORGE

With Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu
KUFRE USANGA


LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Poison for the Dogs' (Short Story)
ESHITIKA L. LUTOMIA

'Wherever Something Stands Something Else Must Stand Beside It' (Short Story)
A. ONIPEDE HOLLIST

'The Song-Warrior' (Short Story)
REGINALD OFODILE

'Answers that will not be swallowed' (Poem)
'When a bitch eats her young' (Poem)
'This is how' (Poem)
'A Daughter, Coming Undone' (Poem)
'Crumbs' (Poem)
'Not Crying' (Poem)
IQUO DIANAABASI

'The String of Discord' (Poem)
"Destiny's Dish"
'Tasha' (Poem)
AISHA UMAR

'African Children' (Poem)
TIJANI ABDULLAHI OLANIYI

'Nun's Twilight Call' (Poem)
CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI

'To Mokwugo Okoye - A Forsaken Freedom Fighter' (Poem)
IFEOMA OKOYE

REMEMBERING ELDRED JONES (1925-2020)
Farewell, Othello's Countryman
NIYI OSUNDARE

Professor Eldred Jones: A Humanist and Critic
ELIZABETH I.A. KAMARA

TRIBUTE
Chukwuemeka Ike: An Administrator with a Cinematic Imagination
AUSTINE AMANZE AKPUDA


REVIEWS
Sakui Malakpa, Black Professor, White University
OBI NWAKANMA

Daria Tunca (ed), Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
KATE HARLIN

Ernest Emenyonu, The Literary History of the Igbo Novel: African Literature in African Languages
KUFRE USANGA

Jack Mapanje, Greetings from Grandpa
OLUFEMI DUNMADE

Ada Uzoamaka Azodo & Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (eds), Resident Alien and Other Stories: An Anthology of Immigrant Voices from Africa and the African Diaspora
INI UKO

Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. He is Series Editor of African Literature Today. His publications include A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2017), Emerging Perspectives on Nawal El Saadawi (2010), and the children's book Uzoechi: A Story of African Childhood (2012).

LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE is Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University). She has been guest lecturer to institutions including Wellesley College, The University of the West Indies and The University of Bremen. She has published in journals including African Literature Today and Matatu and has chapters published in edited books including A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

CHIMALUM NWANKWO is Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria. He has previously taught at the Universities of Nigeria, East Carolina-Greenville, North Carolina A & T State University-Greensboro, where he was Professor of English and World Literatures and Former Chair of the Department of English, Nigeria Turkish Nile University in Abuja. He was Guest Editor of ALT 30 Reflections & Retrospectives. His other critical studies include Of the Deepest Shadows and The Prisons of Fire (2010) and Toward the kingdom of Woman and Man: The Works of Ngugi wa Thiongo (1992). He is also an acclaimed poet, who has published five volumes of poetry, including The Womb in the Heart and Other Poems and Lovesong for Julian Assange & Poems from Love Mountain.

"This constructive volume 39 of African Literature Today arrives with absorbing focus on the inherently speculative nature of African writing. The articles, interviews, literary supplements comprising short fiction, poetry and reviews will enchant lovers of black speculative fiction. [...] This is truly a worthwhile read." Aurealis

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November 2021

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Title Details

276 Pages

2.16 x 1.4 cm

Series: African Literature Today

Series Vol. Number: 39

Imprint: James Currey