Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I New Formations
- Part II Uneven Histories
- Part III Writing the Contemporary
- (I) Looking Back, Looking Forward
- (II) Framing New Visions
- 32 Through a Different Lens
- 33 Children’s Literature and the Construction of Contemporary Multicultures
- 34 Redefining the Boundaries
- 35 Prizing Otherness
- 36 Frontline Fictions
- 37 Reimagining Africa
- 38 Post-Secular Perspectives
- 39 Post-Ethnicity and the Politics of Positionality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
37 - Reimagining Africa
Contemporary Figurations by African Britons
from (II) - Framing New Visions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I New Formations
- Part II Uneven Histories
- Part III Writing the Contemporary
- (I) Looking Back, Looking Forward
- (II) Framing New Visions
- 32 Through a Different Lens
- 33 Children’s Literature and the Construction of Contemporary Multicultures
- 34 Redefining the Boundaries
- 35 Prizing Otherness
- 36 Frontline Fictions
- 37 Reimagining Africa
- 38 Post-Secular Perspectives
- 39 Post-Ethnicity and the Politics of Positionality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Since the 1990s, black British writers have increasingly re-focused on Africa, either taking recourse to specific African contexts, or raising questions about the relevance of Africa to their work. In Some Kind of Black, Diran Adebayo’s protagonist Dele intermittently dons a patterned Agbada, self-consciously stylizing himself as an African Briton. Brian Chikwava’s novel dubs London Harare North, large-scale emigration from Zimbabwe having turned the capital into an extension of the former Rhodesia. Whilst the term ‘Afropolitan’ does not befit all black British authors, some openly embrace the tag. As these examples indicate, this chapter focuses on texts that resist easy categorisation but which nevertheless explore Africa’s historical, contextual, genealogical, and cultural connections to Britain.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing , pp. 620 - 633Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020