Journal of the African Literature Association,

Volume 17, Issue 1 (2023)

Issue’s TOC: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rala20/17/1

Phyllis Clark Taoua & Grace A. Musila (2023) Of freedom and literature in Africa and the diaspora, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 1-13, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2187950

This introduction to a special issue on freedom presents a set of original essays that reflect critically on the idea of freedom in relation to specific literary texts from Africa and the African diaspora. Read together, the essays presented in this introduction make up a rich tapestry, offering a set of reflections that map out the complex geo-histories of freedoms in Africa and an array of creative representations of this generative idea across the continent and in the diaspora. This diversity of texts and contexts allows for a wide-ranging critical exploration of a variety of genres, languages, cultures and historical periods. Areas of common ground across the ten essays include literature as a form of protest, creative ways of resisting repression, sidestepping to get around constraints, efforts to build networks of solidarity within and across communities and exploring what it means to be human within these reclaimed spaces. 

Eleni Coundouriotis (2023) Belonging and freedom in Ernest Cole’s The House of Bondage, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 14-32, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178719

Polo B. Moji (2023) Blackness blurred: (un)belonging, kinship, and métissage in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 33-48, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178723

Meg Arenberg (2023) Mohammed Khelef Ghassani’s “Kwetu”: poetry, place, and liberation, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 49-69, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2179180

Gibson Ncube (2023) Queer(ing) freedom: rewriting coming-out narratives in contemporary Maghrebian literary production, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1,70-86, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178722

Naminata Diabaté (2023) (Digital) anthologies and genre: Writing sexual pleasure and poetic freedom, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 87-111, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2181520

Innocentia J. Mhlambi (2023) Black liberation politics and quagmires in trans-Atlantic black operas, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 112-131, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2180177

Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra (2023) Of freedom and the problem of the future in contemporary diasporic African speculative fiction, Journal of the African Literature Association,17:1, 132-150, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178720

Phyllis Clark Taoua (2023) Of writing and freedom in Sony Labou Tansi’s novel Life and a Half, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 151-173, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178718

Joanna Boampong (2023) Deconstructing the figure of the dictator in Ramón Esono Ebalé’s La pesadilla de Obi, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 174-191, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2178721

Grace A Musila (2023) Refusal and the American dream in Dinaw Mengestu’s oeuvre, Journal of the African Literature Association, 17:1, 192-209, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2023.2180178

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