This book investigates the many ways in which African literature has engaged with themes of migration and postcolonial disillusionment.The book argues that disillusionment amongst African migrants facing discrimination abroad has become a microcosm for postcolonial disillusionment at home. Drawing on literature and film from across the four regions of Africa, the book considers the intersection of postcolonial disillusionment and migration, showing that the two are interwoven. African authors across the diaspora and at home have used themes of corruption, insecurity, coup d'état, wars, sociopolitical instability, poverty, statelessness, human rights abuses, and ethnic tensions as markers of disillusionment. In their works, displacement tends to ignite disenchantment, leading to a double experience of disillusionment and confusion, wherein it is both difficult to go back home and a challenge to remain in the diaspora.Highlighting the interconnectedness of postcolonial instability and migratory experiences, this book will be an important read for researchers working on African literature, film, migration, and postcolonial studies.
Oyewumi Olatoye Agunbiade is Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Walter Sisulu University, South Africa.Enongene Mirabeau Sone is Professor of African Literature and Cultural Studies, and Chair of the Department of Arts, Faculty of Law, Humanities & Social Sciences, Walter Sisulu University, South Africa.
Part 1: Trends in Portrayal of Postcolonial Disillusionment 1.Trends in Postcolonial Disillusionment in Africa 2. Postcolonial Disillusionment and Failed Resistance in Nigerian Fiction: Antinomies and the Possibilities of a Transformative Future 3. Exploring Military Tyranny and Disillusionment in the Postcolony in Joy Chinwokwu’s Clouds at Sunrise 4. Post-Colonial Disillusionment in Oginga Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru 5. Multifaceted Disillusionment in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Study of Zakes Mda’s Mother Of All Eating 6. Mutual Distrust, Ethnic Tensions and Neo-Colonial Unease as Disillusionment in Rwanda: The Case of Fergal Keane's Season of Blood and Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches 7. Beyond Leadership: Inverted Disillusionment in Postcolonial African Literature 8. Disillusionment, Women, And Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born Part 2: African Culture as Agent for Postcolonial Reorder 9. Myth and Social Re-ordering in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Osiris Rising 10. Ritual (M)Othering, the Mythological Contestations of Postcolonial Nationhood and Forms of Disillusionment in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were Part 3: Migration as Consequence of Disillusionment 11. Place, Disillusionment and Displacement: The Afropolitan-Self as an Alternative Order in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Memory of Departure 12. Diasporic Journeys in Francophone African Literature: Understanding Migration, Subalternity, and Disenchantment 13. From Hope to Disillusionment: The Fallacy of North African Arab/Muslim Immigrants’ Integration in Fawzia Zouari’s I Die by This Country 14. Displaced Dreams: African Fictions of Migrancy at the Crossroads of Hope and Despair 15. The Lion's Point of View: Examining Clandestine Migration in Postcolonial African Fiction and Film 16. Tanzanian Diasporic Disillusionment and the Cruel Promise of Happiness in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Gravel Heart and M.G. Vassanji’s No New Land
