Readings in African Popular Fiction

STEPHANIE NEWELL is George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University. Her works include Histories of Dirt in West Africa: Media and Urban Life in Colonial and Postcolonial Lagos (2020) and The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa (2013), finalist for the ASA Best Book Prize 2014.

• Intoduction, Stephanie Newell. Part 1 West Africa: Hausa creative writing in the 1930s - an exploration in postcolonial theory, Graham Furniss; Indian films and Nigerian lovers - media and the creation of parallel modernities, Brian Larkin; primary text 1 - excerpts from soyayya pamphlet Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, Alhaki Kwikiyo(?); Onitsha market literature, Donatus Nwoga; the role of the publisher in Onitsha market literature, Don Dodson; primary text 2 - extracts from J.C. Anorue, "How to Become Rich and Avoid Poverty"; irregular visitors - narratives about "ogbaanje" (spirit children) in southern Nigerian popular writing, Misty Bastian; Felix Couchoro - pioneer of popular writing in West Africa?, Alain Ricard; writing and popular culture in Cameroon, Richard Bjornson; the character of popular fiction in Ghana, Ime Ikiddeh. Part 2 East Africa: storylines, spellbinders and heartbeats - decentering the African oral-popular discourse, Raoul Granqvist; romances for the office worker - Aubrey Kalitera and Malawi's white-collar reading public, Bernth Lindfors; "Joe", the sweetest reading in Africa - documentation and discussion of a popular magazine in Kenya, Bodil Folke Frederiksen; primary text 3 - facsimiles of cartoons, stories and covers from "Joe" magazine; representations of men and women, city and town in Kenyan novels of the 1970s and 1980s, Nici Nelson; primary text 4 - excerpts from Charles Mangua, "Son of Woman"; the Swahili novel and the common man in East Africa, Euphrase Kezilahabi; language and ideology in postcolonial Kenyan literature - the case of David Maillu's macronic fiction?, J. Robert Kurtz and Robert M. Kurts; primary text 5 - excerpts from Ben R. Mtobwa's "Dar es Salaam Usiku (Dar es Salaam by Night)". Part 3 Southern Africa: rediscovery of the ordinary, Njabulo Ndebele; African popular fiction - consideration of a category?, Michael Chapman; the Sophiatown writers of the 50s - the unreal reality of their world, Paul Gready; "Drum" magazine (1951-59) and the spatial configurations of gender, Dorothy Driver; primary text 6 -facsimiles of covers, articles and letters from "Drum" magazine; La Guma's "Little Libby" - the adventures of liberation Chabalala, Roger Field; primary text 7 - artwork of "Little Libby" cartoon strips; reading lives, Sarah Nuttall; popular crime thrillers by black authors in South Africa, Lindy Stiebel; primary text 8 -excerpts from South African crime thriller "The Secret in My Bosom", Gomolemo Mokai.

I know of no other book like this one and it provides an introduction to an extremely important but ignored cultural phenomenon...an important field of African writing that has been invisible for the most part in North America and Europe. The range of articles examining the reading practices of the majority of Africans on the continent forces a reconsideration of the idea of 'African literature'.