New Black and African Writing

As has already been noted the celebration of Black writing in the fifties and sixties saw writers turning from old problems of colonialism and racial discrimination to new issues of political independence. This trend has survived twenty-first century African writing in its concern with the historical and political experiences of modern African republics. The focus of this study is on a new tenor led by younger energies envisioning and rewriting postcolonial power relations in various individual, national and cultural environments. Conflicts of citizenship, gender relations and of minority ethnicities within an exploitative majority structure have trailed the new discourse. Arranged with writer-comaparitive foci and cutting across nationalities of the continent, these selected chapters offer contemporary perspectives on black literatures as a tributary of the Renaissance that had stirred older black and African traditions.