Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: War in African Literature: Literary Harvests, Human Tragedies
- ARTICLES
- The Muted Index of War in African Literature & Society
- ‘Life in the Camp of the Enemy’: Alemseged Tesfai's Theatre of War
- Sacrifice & the Contestation of Identity in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn
- Of War & Madness: A Symbolic Transmutation of the Nigeria–Biafra War in Select Stories from The Insider: Stories of War & Peace from Nigeria
- Becoming a Feminist Writer: Representation of the Subaltern in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra
- Politics & Human Rights in Non-Fiction Prison Literature
- Problems of Representing the Zimbabwean War of Liberation in Mutasa's The Contact, Samupindi's Pawns & Vera's The Stone Virgins
- The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni
- History, Memoir & a Soldier's Conscience: Philip Efiong's Nigeria & Biafra: My Story
- Of the Versification of Pain: Nigerian Civil War Poetry
- REVIEWS
- Index
The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni
from ARTICLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: War in African Literature: Literary Harvests, Human Tragedies
- ARTICLES
- The Muted Index of War in African Literature & Society
- ‘Life in the Camp of the Enemy’: Alemseged Tesfai's Theatre of War
- Sacrifice & the Contestation of Identity in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn
- Of War & Madness: A Symbolic Transmutation of the Nigeria–Biafra War in Select Stories from The Insider: Stories of War & Peace from Nigeria
- Becoming a Feminist Writer: Representation of the Subaltern in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra
- Politics & Human Rights in Non-Fiction Prison Literature
- Problems of Representing the Zimbabwean War of Liberation in Mutasa's The Contact, Samupindi's Pawns & Vera's The Stone Virgins
- The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni
- History, Memoir & a Soldier's Conscience: Philip Efiong's Nigeria & Biafra: My Story
- Of the Versification of Pain: Nigerian Civil War Poetry
- REVIEWS
- Index
Summary
In 2004 Alexandra Fuller dedicated her second novel, Scribbling the Cat to Alexander Kanengoni. This was an intriguing gesture on many levels. Firstly, Fuller had never met Kanengoni but explains that he became the metaphorical ‘godfather’ to her novel after she came across his novel Echoing Silences in Johannesburg airport, shortly after it was published in 1997. Secondly, although both novels focus on the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, Fuller's is an autobiographical account of her travels with a white former Rhodesian soldier whilst Kanengoni's is a fictional exploration of the experiences of a black guerrilla soldier.
Such public declarations of cross-racial identification are relatively unusual in the context of post-independence Zimbabwean war literature, which remains scarred by legacies of racial division. This said, of course there has been much cross-pollination between writers from a wide range of backgrounds in Zimbabwe (as elsewhere), facilitated by forward thinking dynamic editors such as the courageous Irene Staunton. There have also been fictional explorations of cross-racial identification and indeed both Fuller and Kanengoni published short stories on this theme in a recent volume of new writing from Zimbabwe entitled Writing Still (Staunton 2003). But even with these precedents, Fuller's decision to dedicate her second novel to Kanengoni forms both a provocative political statement and an attempt to open up new dialogues. This article looks at both the motivations for Fuller's identification and its implications for her identity as an ‘African writer’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- War in African Literature Today , pp. 103 - 111Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008