China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African Literature

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-009-30027-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 594 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in World Literature

China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century African Literature unpacks the long-standing complexity of exchanges between Africans and Chinese as far back as the Cold War and beyond. This scope encompasses how China, which emerged as a main engine of the world economy by the end of the twentieth century, has transformed patterns of globalization across the continent. In this ground-breaking work on cultural representations, Duncan M. Yoon examines the controversial symbol of China in African literature. He reads acclaimed authors like Kofi Awoonor, Henri Lopes, and Bessie Head, as well as contemporary writers, including Ufrieda Ho, Kwei Quartey, and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Each chapter focuses on a genre such as poetry, detective fiction, memoir, and the novel, drawing out themes like resource extraction, diaspora, gender, and race. Yoon demonstrates how African creative voices grapple with and make meaning out of the possibilities and limitations of globalization in an increasingly multipolar world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Yoon, Duncan M

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: African literary imaginaries of China; 1. Kofi Awoonor imagines China: the Longue Durée of Ghana – PRC relations; 2. Figures of extraction: representations of mining in Ghana and Zambia; 3. Figures of risk: memoirs of a Chinese South African and a Cameroonian in China; 4. Racialization and Afro-Chinese identity: Henri Lopès's Le lys et le flamboyant; Conclusion: forming Afro-Chinese worlds.

Über Autor(innen)

Yoon, Duncan M
Duncan M. Yoon is an assistant professor at New York University. He was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea. He chaired the forum, African Literature to 1990, at the Modern Language Association.