From Home and Exile

A Negotiation of Ideas about Home in Malawian Poetry

Joanna Woods

• Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9789956792771
• eBook ISBN: 9789956792306
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book is about home. With Malawi as its focus, it seeks to understand ideas about home as expressed through poetry written by Malawians in English. Although African Literatures are studied those of Malawi have not received agreeable attention. This book surveys poetry by five Malawian writers Felix Mnthali, Frank Chipasula, Jack Mapanje, Lupenga Mphande, and Steve Chimombo. The discussion negotiates scribed experience of exile, engendered by Dr. Bandas regime, and shows that the selected poets effectively converse with a sense of home, reflecting on its transformations in their work. Interrogating the strict definitions of home, the argument highlights that far from home-less exiles in fact clarify the sense of what home is. The manoeuvre is one of thinking towards an unboundaried home. This book will be of value not only to readers interested in the cultures of Africa but to all those with an interest in worldwide literary phenomena, and ideas therein of home and exile.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Abstract Note
• Map
• Chapter I: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Methods and Multiple Spaces of Study
• Chapter 3: Home, Exile and The Self: The Negotiation of Concepts
• Chapter 4: The Context: Malawi as place, its history and its people
• Chapter 5: The Poetry: An Interpretation of a Selection of Poems by the Named Malawian Poets
• Conclusion: A Reflection on Research Findings and Spaces of Study
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Back cover