Debating the Afropolitan

Emilia María Durán-Almarza, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Carla Rodríguez González

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367085780
• eBook ISBN: 9780429662973
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume evaluates the vitality of the term 'Afropolitan' within the fields of African and Afro-diasporic studies. A hotly debated and malleable term, its wide circulation has allowed for Afropolitanism to become a contested space for critical inquiry. The contributions to this book are representative of the lively discussions that Afropolitan aesthetics, identity politics and Afro(cosmo)politanisms have sparked in recent years. The book aims to continue the debates around these concepts foregrounded by earlier works in the fields of postcolonial literature, African cultural studies, and studies of diaspora and transnationalism. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Debating the Afropolitan
• 1 An Afropolitan literary aesthetics? Afropolitan style and tropes in recent diasporic African fiction
• 2 Afropolitan in their own way? Writing and self-identification in Aminatta Forna and Chika Unigwe
• 3 Lost in translation: re-reading the contemporary Afrodiasporic condition in Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go
• 4 Negotiating singularity and alikeness: Esi Edugyan, Lawrence Hill and Canadian Afrodiasporic writing
• 5 Transforming the body, transculturing the city: Nalo Hopkinson’s fantastic Afropolitans
• 6 Cosmopolitanism’s new clothes? The limits of the concept of Afropolitanism
• Index