Against a disturbing political backdrop and through an in-depth appraisal of selected illustrative texts from major genres—poetry, prose, and drama—Emmanuel Fru Doh presents the origins and growth of a young but potent literature. To him, Anglophone-Cameroon literature is a weapon in the hands of an oppressed English speaking minority in his native Cameroon, Africa, who were unfairly manipulated by the United Nations and Britain into a skewed federation in the name of an independence deal.

Guided by postcolonial theory and the ideas of some Western and African philosophers this study's in-depth analysis of the novels of three Anglophone Cameroonian authors addresses the question of how principles of nation formation and nationalism are influenced by both colonialism and pre-colonial in situ constituents. The analysis focuses on how nations represented in the imaginary worlds constructed by the novelists are dominated by aspects such as ethnicity, corruption, authoritarianism, nepotism, solidarity and communitarianism which marginalize the masses, leaving them in misery and abject poverty. Tracing the historical settings of the novels from 1948 till present day, the study delineates the writers' representation of the Anglophones of Cameroon as being marginalized as well as suffering from self-marginalization and also demonstrates how postcolonial misery in Africa is not caused solely by colonialism but by several other aspects. This study reads the works of these Anglophone novelists not only as representing aspects in a nation but as tools of renegotiating a better society and a way forward for this nation.

This is a foundational text on the production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature. The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as the official languages. Ashuntantang shows that the pattern of production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature is not only framed by the minority status of English and English-speaking Cameroonians within the Republic of Cameroon, but is also a reflection of a postcolonial reality in Africa where mostly African literary texts published by western multi-national corporations are assured wide international accessibility and readership. This book establishes that in spite of these setbacks, Anglophone Cameroon writers have produced a corpus of work that has enriched the genres of prose, poetry and drama, and that these texts deserve a wider readership.

This handbook provides a critical overview of literature dealing with groups of people or regions that suffer marginalization within Africa. The contributors examine a multiplicity of minority discourses expressed in African literature, including those who are culturally, socially, politically, religiously, economically, and sexually marginalized in literary and artistic creations. Chapters and sections of the book are structured to identify major areas of minority articulation of their condition and strategies deployed against the repression, persecution, oppression, suppression, domination, and tyranny of the majority or dominant group. Bringing together diverse perspectives to give a holistic representation of the African reality, this handbook is an important read for scholars and students of comparative and postcolonial literature and African studies.

All The Essays In This Anthology Reflect The Growing Importance Of Literature And Cultures That Might Once Have Been Regarded As Marginal. This Book Affirms The Importance And Interest Of A Wide Variety Of Literatures Sharing A Language But Reflecting A Rich And Provocative Diversity Of Histories, Experiences And Attitudes To The Shared World Which Still Divides Us. Couple Of The Essays Look Into The Work Of Anita Desai And Salman Rushdie.

This landmark volume brings together a very rich harvest of forty critical essays on Cameroon literature by Cameroon literary scholars. The book is the result of the Second Conference on Cameroon Literature which took place at the University of Buea in 1994. The Buea conference was motivated by a determination to look at Cameroon literature straight into its face and criticize it using literary criteria of the strictest kind. Gone were the times when the criticism was complacent because it was believed that a nascent literature could easily be stifled by application of rather strict cannons of literary criticism. Both writers and critics had a lot to say. Subjects dealt with ranged from general topics on literature, survival and national identity, through specialized articles on prose, poetry, drama, translation, language, folklore, children's literature, Journalism and politics. It is the hope of the volume editors that the publication of these papers will instigate the kind of actions that were recommended and that the prolific nature of Cameroon literature will equally give rise to a prolific and robust criticism.

This volume presents new research and critical debates in African book history, and brings together a range of disciplinary perspectives by leading scholars in the subject. It includes case studies from across Africa, ranging from third-century manuscript traditions to twenty-first century internet communications.

The papers in this volume focus on fiction and theatre in their traditional forms as well as in their encounters with novel and innovative forms and avenues of dissemination. As a cultural practice that emerged from a process of protest and contestation of hegemony, it is understandable that one main concern in African literature and literary criticism is the resistance against the emergence of marginalizing centers in formerly or currently marginalized societies with regard to discourses, aesthetics and media of creation. These new centers that sometimes undermine the strategic/tactical exploitation of the relative advantage procured by each medium run the risk of leading to new forms of stratification that mitigate the import of African and African diasporic literatures. The collection of essays therefore seeks to analyze the representation of pertinent socio-political and historical questions in a variety of postcolonial texts from Africa and the African diasporas, notably the Caribbean islands and the United States of America. However, far from re-writing of history in a way that cedes to conservative worldviews, creative writers and critics simultaneously attempt to chart ways forward for socially all-inclusive futures. In the context of colonial and neo-colonial legacies that seem to forestall any sense of individual and collective self-fulfillment, contributors to this volume examine the pertinence of African fiction and theatre in imagining new vistas of re-conceptualizing the postcolonial condition in ways that re-galvanize the belief in an enabling future.

"49 insightful essays ... which originally appeared on his award-winning blog 'Scribbles from the den'"--Page 4 of cover

The book Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake, through a pluralist critical approach, interrogates Butake’s major creative works—Lake God, And Palm Wine Will Flow, The Survivors, Shoes and Four Men in Arms, Dance of the Vampires and The Rape of Michelle —mainly in terms of their political underpinnings and cultural signification. The intention is to place his drama within the socio-political matrix of Cameroon and demonstrate the topicality of the issues of governance, marginalization, and corruption in Cameroon or Africa that Butake consistently foregrounds in his creative works. The study opens with an overview of the historical and social milieu that feeds Butake’s imagination and the introduction is followed by an interview of the playwright in which he explains his mission as a writer. The next two chapters appraise the political symbolism of Butake’s plays and chapter five undertakes a comparison of the colonial legacy and the culture of corruption in Butake’s Lake God and The Rape ofMichelle. Women in Butake’s imaginative universe play a non-negligible role in change. They are portrayed as political and social activists in their challenge to autocratic rule. This is the leitmotif of chapter six, which highlights the contribution of women towards political change in Cameroon. In chapters seven and eight, the focus is on articulating the cultural signification of Butake’s plays in terms of political change. Concomitantly, these chapters also demonstrate Butake’s seamless incorporation of elements of oral literature in his drama, as he interpolates proverbs, divinations and other elements of orality in his work. Chapter nine of the book points out how Butake foregrounds the character traits of his protagonists against the backdrop of traditional Noni religion as well as Christianity. Thus, the bigotry and belligerence of both the Fon and Father Leo in Lake God, for example, are projected through a supernatural frame. The conclusion appraises the contemporaneity of Butake’s drama. His oeuvre continues to inspire so many people: from disenfranchised groups that see in his drama a path to reclaiming liberties and to critics who are challenged to hone their literary tools in the endeavor to situate his works within the dynamics of politics and culture in Africa.