Course Description
Summary
This course serves as an introduction to the vital stories and voices of contemporary African literature. We will devote ourselves to closely reading novels, short stories, poems, and plays that explore modern African lives, both as they exist in relation to and imagine futures beyond the cruel legacies of genocide, apartheid, and (neo)colonialism. In the pages we read, you will find woven tales of national and personal liberations; intimate portraits of township life, full of grief, grit, and humor; family sagas unfolding across landscapes touched by drought and fraught with the memory of genocide; and glimpses into the ambitions and anxieties of emerging African intellectuals, who feel acutely the many hopes pinned to their futures. From exciting emerging voices to Nobel laureates, writers whose works we may cover include Wole Soyinka, Veronique Tadjo, R茅my Ngamije, Tayeb Salih, Chinua Achebe, Panashe Chigumazi, David Diop, Magogodi Oamphela Makhene, Akwaeke Amezi, Keith Vries, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Njabulo Ndebele.
