The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature

The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature introduces world literature readers to the transnational, multivocal writings of immigrant African authors. Covering works produced in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the world, this book investigates three major aesthetic paradigms in African diasporic literature: the Sankofan wave (late 1960s-early 1990s); the Janusian wave (1990s-2020s); and the Offshoots of the New Arrivants (those born and growing up outside Africa).

Written by well-established and emerging scholars of African and diasporic literatures from across the world, the chapters in the book cover the works of well-known and not-so-well-known Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone writers from different theoretical positionalities and critical approaches, pointing out the unique innovative artistic qualities of this major subgenre of African literature. The focus on the ＂diasporic consciousness＂ of the writers and their works sets this handbook apart from others that solely emphasize migration, which is more of a process than the community of settled African people involved in the dynamic acts of living reflected in diasporic writings.

This book will appeal to researchers and students from across the fields of Literature, Diaspora Studies, African Studies, Migration Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

Lokangaka Losambe is the Frederick M. and Fannie C.P. Corse Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He previously taught African, African Diaspora and English literatures at universities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland, and South Africa. Dr. Losambe also served as the president of the African Literature Association (ALA) in 2012-2013.

Tanure Ojaide is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the UNC, Charlotte. He has published collections of poetry, novels, short stories, memoirs, and self-authored and co-authored scholarly books. Dr. Ojaide teaches and publishes on African literature and Culture, the Folklore of Africa and the African Diaspora, and Globalization in African Poetry.