pt. 1. Backgrounds. Africa and writing / Alain Ricard -- Sub-Saharan Africa's literary history in a nutshell / Albert S. Gerard -- Politics, culture, and literary form / Bernth Lindfors -- African literature in Portuguese / Russell G. Hamilton -- North African writing / Anissa Talahite -- A continent and its literatures in French / Jonathan Ngate -- African literature and the colonial factor / Simon Gikandi -- African literature: myth or reality? / V. Y. Mudimbe -- pt. 2. Orality, literacy, and the interface. Africa and orality/ Liz Gunner -- Orality, literacy, and African literature / Abiola Irele -- Oral literature and modern African literature / Isidore Okpewho -- Women's oral genres / Mary E. Modupe Kolawole -- The oral artist's script / Harold Schenb -- pt. 3. Writer, writing, and function. The novelist as teacher: the truth of fiction / Chinua Achebe -- Three in a bed: fiction, morals, and politics / Nadine Gordimer -- Nobel lecture / Naguib Mahfouz -- Redefining relevance / Njabulo S. Ndebele -- Preparing ourselves for freedom / Albie Sachs -- pt. 4. Creativity in/and adversarial contexts. A voice that would not be silenced / Wole Soyinka -- Exile and creativity: a prolonged writer's block / Micere Githae Mugo -- Containing cockroaches (memories of incarceration reconstructed in exile) / Jack Mapanje -- Writing against neo-Colonialism / Ngugi wa Thiong -- The writer and responsibility / Breyten Breytenbach -- Dissidence and creativity / Nawal El Saadawi -- Culture beyond color: A South African dilemma / Zoe Wicomb -- In praise of exile / Nurrudin Farah -- The African writer's experience of European literature / D. Marechera -- pt. 5. On nativism and the quest for indigenous aesthetics: negritude and traditionalism. Negritude: a humanism of the twentieth century / Leopold S. Senghor -- What is negritude? / Abiola Irele -- Negritude and a new Africa: an update / Peter S. Thompson -- Prodigals, come home! / Chinweizu -- Neo-tarzanism: the poetics of pseudo-tradition / Wole Soyinka -- My signifier is more native than yours: issues in making a literature African / Adeleke Adeeko -- Out of Africa: topologies of nativism / Kwame Anthony Appiah -- On national culture / Frantz Fanon -- True and false pluralism / Paulin Hountondji -- "An open letter to Africans" c/o The Punic One-Party State / Sony Labou Tansi -- Resistance theory/theorizing resistance or two cheers for nativism / Benita Parry -- pt. 6. The language of African literature. The dead end of African literature? / Obiajuna Wali -- The language of African literature / Ngugi wa Thiong'O -- Anamnesis in the language of writing / Assia Djebar -- African-language literature: tragedy and hope / Daniel P. Kunene -- pt. 7. On genres. Background to the West African novel / Emmanuel N. Obiechina -- Languages of the novel: a lover's reflections / Andre Brink -- Realism and naturalism in African fiction / Neil Lazarus -- "Who am I?": fact and fiction in African first-person narrative/ Mineke Schipper -- Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa / Tejumola Olaniyan -- The fourth stage: through the mysteries of Ogun to the origin of Yoruba tragedy / Wole Soyinka -- Introduction to "King Oedipus" / Tawfiq Al-Hakim -- Poetry as dramatic performance / Kofi Anyidoho -- "Azikwelwa" (we will not ride): politics and value in black South African poetry / Anne McClintock -- Revolutionary practice and style in Lusophone liberation poetry / Emmanuel Ngara -- pt. 8. Theorizing the criticism of African literature. Academic problems and critical techniques / Eldred D. Jones -- African literature, western critics / Rand Bishop -- A formal approach to African literature / Kenneth W. Harrow -- African absence, a literature without a voice / Ambroise Kom -- The nature of things: arrested decolonization and critical theory / Biodun Jeyifo -- Reading through western eyes / Christopher L. Miller -- Inherited mandates in African literature Criticism: the intrinsic paradigm / Olakunle George -- Exclusionary practices in African literary criticism / Florence Stratton -- pt. 9. Marxism. Towards a Marxist sociology of African literature / Omafume F. Onoge -- Writers in politics: the power of words and the words of power / Ngugi wa Thiong'O -- National liberation and culture / Amilcar Cabral -- Concerning national culture / Agostinho Neto -- Masks and Marx: the Marxist ethos vis-a-vis African revolutionary theory and praxis / Ayi Kwei Armah -- Marxist aesthetics: an open-ended legacy / Chidi Amuta -- Pt. 10. Feminism. To be an African woman writer-an overview and a detail / Ama Ata Aidoo -- The heroine in Arab literature / Nawal El Saadawi -- Women and creative writing in Africa / Flora Nwapa -- African motherhood-Myth and reality / Lauretta Ngcobo -- Stiwanism: feminism in an African context / Molara Ogundipe-Leslie -- Feminism with a small "f"! / Buchi Emecheta -- Writing near the bone / Yvonne Vera -- Some notes on African feminism / Carole Boyce Davies -- Bringing African women into the classroom: rethinking pedagogy and epistemology / Obioma Nnaemeka -- Enlightenment epistemology and the invention of polygyny / Uzo Esonwanne -- Feminism, postcolonialism and the contradictory orders of modernity / Ato Quayson -- pt. 11. Structuralism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. Genetic structuralism as a critical technique (notes toward a sociological theory of the African novel) / Sunday O. Anozie -- In praise of alienation / Abiola Irele -- In the wake of colonialism and modernity / Biodun Jeyifo -- Poststructuralism and postcolonial discourse / Simon Gikandi -- Subjectivity and history: derrida in Algeria / Robert J. C. Young -- The angel of progress: pitfalls of the term "post-colonialism" / Anne McClintock -- Postmodernity, postcoloniality, and African studies / Tejumola Olaniyan -- Postcolonialism and postmodernism / Ato Quayson -- Is the post- in postmodernism the post- in postcolonial? / Kwame Anthony Appiah -- Postmodernism and black writing in South Africa / Lewis Nkosi -- African language literature and postcolonial criticism / Karin Barber -- pt. 12. Ecocriticism. Ecoing the other(s): the call of global green and black African responses / William Slaymaker -- Different shades of green: ecocriticism and African literature / Byron Caminero-Santangelo -- Ecological postcolonialism in African women's literature / Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi -- Environmentalism and postcolonialism / Rob Nixon -- pt. 13. Queer, postcolonial. "Wheyting be dat?": the treatment of homosexuality in African literature / Chris Dunton -- Out in Africa / Gaurav Desai -- Toward a lesbian continuum? Or reclaiming the erotic / Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi -- Queer futures: The coming-out novel in South Africa / Brenna Munro.