1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808483103321

Autore

Mwangi Evan

Titolo

Africa writes back to self : metafiction, gender, sexuality / / Evan Maina Mwangi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Albany, : State University of New York Press, c2009

ISBN

1-4384-2697-6

1-4416-2054-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (363 p.)

Disciplina

823/.91409353

Soggetti

African fiction (English) - History and criticism

Self in literature

Self-perception in literature

Sex role in literature

Sex in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : Writing Back to Self -- Genealogies and Functions of Self-Reflexive Fiction -- (En)countering Sex in the Nationalist Canon -- Potentials and Pitfalls of National Language Literatures  -- Orature and Deconstructed Folklore -- Politicized Palimpsests and Gendered Intertexts --Painted Metaphors : The Gendered Deployment of Visual Arts -- Refiguring (Out) Queer Sexualities -- Gendered Theoretical Recalibrations.

Sommario/riassunto

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.