AFRICAN

LITERATURE
 Introduction to African Literature

• Africa is home to extraordinary intellectual

effervescence. Yet, many myths about Africa
persist into the twenty-first century, despite the
efforts of thousands of scholars to eradicate
them. The myth that Africa had no writing and no
history is one of the most persistent.
Introduction to African
Literature

Characteristics of African Literature

• African literatures are ancient
• African literatures are vibrant today
• African literatures are of high literary quality
• African literatures have been globally important
• African literatures are also written by and about African women
Introduction to African
Literature

African Literature
• The term African Literature generally refers to a
comprehensive, complex and creative literature of and
from Africa. African literature may be classified into three
distinctly and widely accepted categories- traditional oral
literature of Africa, literature written in indigenous African
languages and literature written in European languages.
Introduction to African
Literature

Traditional Oral Literature of Africa

• Traditional oral literature of Africa may be in the form of prose, verse or
proverb. It is generally described as orature. Orature flourished in Africa
primarily in absence of widespread literacy and was handed down the
generations through memorization and recitation. The contents may differ in
length ranging from single sentence formulation such as proverbs to epics which
has to be performed over a period of time. This verbal art had a utilitarian
purpose of providing entertainment as well as instruction. They served as the
medium to explain the creation of universe, the essence of the activities of God
and creatures and their intra and inter relationships. Oral folklore was employed
to reinstate faith in group values and discourage anti-social tendencies.
Introduction to African
Literature

African Written Literature(African Language)

• The span of African written literature is close to five thousand years.

The antecedents of Africa written literature can be traced to
hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt. Arabic literature also came
into vogue during seventh century B.C.E. when Egypt was conquered
by Arabs. African literary works are also available in native African
languages like those of Yoruba and Hausa in West Africa; Amharic,
Somali and Swahili in East Africa, Sotho and Zulu in Southern
Africa.
Introduction to African
Literature

African Written Literature(European Language)

 Periods of African
Literature
• African Literature were also categorized
into four periods, the pre-colonial,
colonial, post-colonial and the
contemporary period
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literature

• Precolonial literature. During this era Africa was influenced by
two major movements; the expansion and consolidation of
Islam, and the dispersion of the Bantu peoples which led to the
development of many kingdoms and empires. Investigate the
impact, interaction, and conflict which arose and the
development of trade and exchange -- both of commodities and
culture. Pre-colonial conservation practices have tended to be
romanticized by most contemporary commentators.
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literature

• There is a dearth of information about these practices, although available
evidence does indicate that as precolonial society became first regimented
then stratified, access to and use of natural resources also came to be
stratified, and conservation practices to reflect the attempts to balance
competing interests. Such recorded pre-colonial conservation practices as
the demarcation of sacred areas, the allocation of totems, the expropriation
of labor for conservation, did not necessarily reflect egalitarian and
consensual conservation, but rather the exercise of power over people and
resources by dominant clans or classes, as the case would have been.
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literary Works

• Oral literature of west Africa includes:
• The Epic of Sundiata composed in medieval Mali
• The older Epic of Dinga from the old Ghana Empire.
• The Kebra Negast or Book of Kings in Ethiopia which were originally written
in Ge'ez script.
• Ge'ez is written with Ethiopic or the Ge'ez abugida, a script that was originally
developed specifically for this language. It is read from left to right. The Ge'ez script
has been adapted to write other languages, usually ones that are also Semitic.
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literary Works

• One popular form of Traditional African folktale is the
"trickster" story, where a small animal uses its wits to survive
encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters
include:
• Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of
Ghana
• Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria
• Sungura, a hare found in central and East African folklore.
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literary Works

• Other works in written form are abundant, namely in north
Africa, the Sahel regions of west Africa and on the Swahili
coast. From Timbuktu alone, there are an estimated 300,000 or
more manuscripts tucked away in various libraries and private
collections, mostly written in Arabic but some in the native
languages (namely Fula and Songhai).
Periods of African Literature

Pre-colonial African Literary Works

• Many were written at the famous University of Timbuktu-a collective term for
the teaching associated with three mosques in the city of Timbuktu in what is now
Mali; was not a university in the modern sense, but a loosely organized scholastic
community that endured for many centuries during the medieval period. The
material covers a wide array of topics, including Astronomy, Poetry, Law,
History, Faith, Politics, and Philosophy among others. Swahili literature
similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic teachings but developed under
indigenous circumstances. One of the most renowned and earliest pieces of
Swahili literature being Utendi wa Tambuka or "The Story of Tambuka".
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literature

• Colonial African Literature is that which is written during the colonial period or
that speaks about the colonial period in Africa. This could be written by the
Africans or the colonialists. When it is written by the colonialists, it focuses more
on placing the African in the position of the “inferior other” and projects
justification for the West’s colonial enterprise. On the other hand, when this
Literature is written by Africans, it sets out to respond to the colonial master. Its
tries as much to show the colonialists that the African too can write. This is why
some critics consider this literature as borrowing slavishly from Western models.
Furthermore, this literature written by Africans projects the African worldview,
culture and identity in the face of a European self imposed authenticity and
superiority.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist
Joseph Conrad. It is about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into
the Congo Free State in the so-called heart of Africa. Charles Marlow,
the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the
River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of
his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to
create a parallel between what Conrad calls "the greatest town on
earth", London, and Africa as places of darkness.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so-called
civilized people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises
questions about imperialism and racism.
• Heart of Darkness originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's
Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness
has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. Most famously,
the story provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film
Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on
their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• "Master Harold and The Boys" is a play by Athol Fugard. Set in 1950, it was first
produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre in March 1982 and made its premiere on
Broadway on 4 May at the Lyceum Theatre, where it ran for 344 performances. The
play depicts how institutionalized racism, bigotry or hatred can become absorbed by
those who live under it. It is said to be a semi-autobiographical play, as Athol
Fugard's birth name was Harold and his boyhood was very similar to Hally's,
including his father being disabled, and his mother running a tea shop to support the
family. His relationship with his family's servants was also similar to Hally's, as he
sometimes considered them his friends, but other times treated them like subservient
help, insisting that he be called "Master Harold", and once spitting in the face of one
he had been close to.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• The Palm-Wine Drinkard (subtitled "and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the
Dead's Town") is a novel published in 1952 by the Nigerian author Amos Tutuola.
The first African novel published in English outside of Africa, this quest tale based
on Yoruba folktales is written in a modified Yoruba English or Pidgin English. In
it, a man follows his brewer into the land of the dead, encountering many spirits
and adventures. The novel has always been controversial, inspiring both
admiration and contempt among Western and Nigerian critics, but has emerged as
one of the most important texts in the African literary canon, translated into more
than a dozen languages.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• Things Fall Apart is a novel written by Nigerian author Chinua
Achebe. Published in 1958, its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the
south-eastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during
the late nineteenth century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African
novel in English, one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is
a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widely read and
studied in English-speaking countries around the world. Achebe's
debut novel, it was first published by William Heinemann Ltd in the
UK; in 1962, it was also the first work published in Heinemann's
African Writers Series.
Periods of African Literature

Colonial African Literary Works

• The novel follows the life of Okonkwo, an Igbo ("Ibo" in the novel) man and local
wrestling champion in the fictional Nigerian clan of Umuofia. The work is split
into three parts, with the first describing his family, personal history, and the
customs and society of the Igbo, and the second and third sections introducing the
influence of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on the Igbo
community.
• Things Fall Apart was followed by a sequel, No Longer at Ease (1960), originally
written as the second part of a larger work along with Arrow of God (1964).
Achebe states that his two later novels A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of
the Savannah (1987), while not featuring Okonkwo's descendants, are spiritual
successors to the previous novels in chronicling African history.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Literature

• With liberation and increased literacy since most African nations
gained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African
literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition,
with numerous African works appearing in Western academic
curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 20th
century. African writers in this period wrote both in Western
languages (notably English, French and Portuguese) and in
traditional African languages such as Hausa.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Literature

• Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash
between Africa's past and present, between tradition and modernity,
between indigenous and foreign, between individualism and
community, between socialism and capitalism, between development
and self-reliance and between Africanity and humanity. Other themes in
this period include social problems such as corruption, the economic
disparities in newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of
women. Female writers are today far better represented in published
African literature than they were prior to independence.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Literature

• In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence

African writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Previously, Algerian-born Albert Camus had been awarded the
1957 prize.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Authors and their Works

• Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1901– 1991), a Malian writer and

ethnologist, and Ayi Kwei Armah (1939) from Ghana, author of
Two Thousand Seasons, have tried to establish an African
perspective to their own history. Another significant African
novel is Season of Migration to the North by Tayib Salih from
the Sudan.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Authors and their Works

• Doris Lessing (1919 – 2013) from Southern Rhodesia, now

Zimbabwe, published her first novel The Grass is Singing in
1950, after immigrating to England. She initially wrote about her
African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence
in the English literary scene, frequently publishing right through
the century, and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Authors and their Works

• Yvonne Vera (1964 – 2005) was an award-winning author from

Zimbabwe. Her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult
subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are
firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past.
• Tsitsi Dangarembga (1959) is a notable Zimbabwean author
and filmmaker.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Authors and their Works

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938) is a Kenyan writer, formerly

working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work
includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from
literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the
founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mũtĩiri.
Periods of African Literature

Post-colonial African Authors and their Works

• Bate Besong (1954 – 2007) was a Cameroonian playwright,

poet and critic, who was described by Pierre Fandio as “one of
the most representative and regular writers of what might be
referred to as the second generation of the emergent
Cameroonian literature in English".Other Cameroonian
playwrights are Anne Tanyi-Tang and Bole Butake.
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literature

• There is a lot of literary production in Africa since the beginning of
the current decade (2010), even though readers do not always follow
in large numbers. One can also notice the appearance of certain
writings that break with the academic style. In addition, the shortage
of literary critics can be explored on the continent nowadays.
Literary events seem to be very fashionable, including literary
awards, some of which can be distinguished by their original
concepts. The case of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations is
quite illustrative.
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literary Works

• Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987) portrays modern,
independent, post-colonial, urban Africa. It presents the general social,
political, and personal struggles among Africans, and shows the continuing
British and Western economic and cultural influences.
• Yaw O. Agyeman’s A Big Elephant Has been Killed (2003) presents
stories of ordinary friendships, love affairs, and sexual relationships with
the setting in Ghana, and discussions on poverty, underdevelopment,
religious identity, social revolution, and Africa’s relationship with the West.
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literary Works

• Koigi wa Wamwere’s I Refuse to Die; my Journey for Freedom (2003) is
an uncensored account of Kenya’s blood-stained past, and how one man
withstood the horrors of colonialism and the corruption of the post
independence Kenyan leaders. Following the publication of this
autobiography in October, 2002, wa Wamwere won the reelection to the
Kenyan Parliament, and returned to his homeland, after previously
spending thirteen years in prison.
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literary Works

• Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins (2002) portrays the sister and the aunt as
the women who have the power to give a voice to the next generation, at
the background of the reign of terror in Matabeleland.
• Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter (1980) translated from French: In letting
one woman eloquently tell the anguish of her heartbreak in a Muslim
society, Ba suggests that all women have important stories to tell so that
their plight should be given a voice.
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literary Works

• Ashley Markar’s Egyptian Poetry and Stories (2003) depicts a Christian
woman’s voice in predominantly Arab society in contrast to Ba’s voice,
especially in family members’ relationships and the funeral rituals in
“Mina’s Funeral” (2001).
• Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead” – is a social parody on Ford Motor
Company in South Africa about the racial tensions between the “masters”
and the “boys.”
Periods of African Literature

Contemporary African Literary Works

• Kateb Yacine’s “Intelligence Powder” – explores the connections between
Algerian traditional plays, hence the use of choruses, and written plays for
intellectual analysis. Kateb and Ngugi are advocates of writing for masses
and engaging the audience in their own African languages as a sign of
patriotism; and a protest against the language and theatrical conventions of
the colonial masters.
Authors and Their Literary Works
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Chinua Achebe
• One of the worlds most widely recognized and praised writers, Chinua
Achebe wrote some of the most extraordinary works of the 20th century.
His most famous novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is a devastating
depiction of the clash between traditional tribal values and the effects of
colonial rule, as well as the tension between masculinity and femininity in
highly patriarchal societies. Achebe is also a noted literary critic,
particularly known for his passionate critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness (1899), in which he accuses the popular novel of rampant racism
through its othering of the African continent and its people.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Born in Nigeria in 1977, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is part of a new
generation of African writers taking the literary world by storm. Adichie’s
works are primarily character-driven, interweaving the background of her
native Nigeria and social and political events into the narrative. Her novel
Purple Hibiscus (2003) is a bildungsroman, depicting the life experience of
Kambili and her family during a military coup, while her latest
work Americanah (2013) is an insightful portrayal of Nigerian immigrant life
and race relations in America and the western world. Adichie’s works have
been met with overwhelming praise and have been nominated for and won
numerous awards, including the Orange Prize and Booker Prize.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Ayi Kwei Armah

• Ayi Kwei Armah’s novels are known for their intense, powerful depictions
of political devastation and social frustration in Armah’s native Ghana, told
from the point of view of the individual. His works were greatly influenced
by French existential philosophers, such as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert
Camus, and as such hold themes of despair, disillusionment and
irrationality. His most famous work, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet
Born (1968) centers around an unnamed protagonist who attempts to
understand his self and his country in the wake of post-independence.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Mariama Bâ
• One of Africa’s most influential women authors, Mariama Bâ is known for
her powerful feminist texts, which address the issues of gender inequality
in her native Senegal and wider Africa. Bâ herself experienced many of the
prejudices facing women: she struggled for an education against her
traditional grandparents, and was left to look after her nine children after
divorcing a prominent politician. Her anger and frustration at the
patriarchal structures which defined her life spill over into her literature:
her novel So Long A Letter (1981) depicts, simultaneously, its protagonist’s
strength and powerlessness within marriage and wider society.
Authors and Their Literary
Works
Nuruddin Farah

• Born in Somalia in 1945, Nuruddin Farah has written numerous plays,

novels and short stories, all of which revolve around his experiences of his
native country. The title of his first novel From a Crooked Rib (1970)
stems from a Somalian proverb “God created woman from a crooked rib,
and anyone who trieth to straighten it, breaketh it”, and is a commentary on
the sufferings of women in Somalian society through the narrative of a
young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage. His subsequent works
feature similar social criticism, dealing with themes of war and post-
colonial identity.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Aminatta Forna
• Born in Glasgow but raised in Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna first drew
attention for her memoir The Devil That Danced on Water (2003), an
extraordinarily brave account of her family’s experiences living in war-torn
Sierra Leone, and in particular her father’s tragic fate as a political
dissident. Forna has gone on to write several novels, each of them critically
acclaimed: her work The Memory of Love (2010) juxtaposes personal
stories of love and loss within the wider context of the devastation of the
Sierre Leone civil war, and was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Nadine Gordimer
• One of the apartheid era’s most prolific writers, Nadine Gordimer’s works
powerfully explore social, moral, and racial issues in a South Africa under
apartheid rule. Despite winning a Nobel Prize in Literature for her
prodigious skills in portraying a society interwoven with racial tensions,
Gordimer’s most famous and controversial works were banned from South
Africa for daring to speak out against the oppressive governmental
structures of the time. Her novel Burger’s Daughter follows the struggles
of a group of anti-apartheid activists, and was read in secret by Nelson
Mandela during his time on Robben Island.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Alain Mabanckou
• Originating from the Republic of Congo, Alain Mabanckou’s works are
written primarily in French, and are well known for their biting wit, sharp
satire and insightful social commentary into both Africa and African
immigrants in France. His novels are strikingly character-focused, often
featuring ensemble casts of figures, such as his book Broken Glass, which
focuses on a former Congolese teacher and his interactions with the locals
in the bar he frequents, or his novel Black Bazar, which details the
experiences of various African immigrants in an Afro-Cuban bar in Paris.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Ben Okri
• Ben Okri’s childhood was divided between England and time in his native
Nigeria. His young experience greatly informed his future writing: his first,
highly acclaimed novels Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The
Landscapes Within (1981) were reflections on the devastation of the
Nigerian civil war which Okri himself observed firsthand. His later novels
met with equal praise: The Famished Road (1991), which tells the story of
Azaro, a spirit child, is a fascinating blend of realism and depictions of the
spirit world, and won the Booker Prize.
Authors and Their Literary
Works

Ngugi wa Thiong’o
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of Africa’s most important and influential
postcolonial writers. He began his writing career with novels written in
English, which nevertheless revolved around postcolonial themes of the
individual and the community in Africa versus colonial powers and
cultures. Wa Thiong’o was imprisoned without trial for over a year by the
government for the staging of a politically controversial play; after his
release, he committed to writing works only in his native Gikuyi and
Swahili, citing language as a key tool for decolonizing the mindset and
culture of African readers and writers.
21st Century Literary Pieces
21st Century Literary Pieces

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington
Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half
of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history:
Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in
Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. 
• With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters
swept up in the turbulence of the decade.
21st Century Literary Pieces

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university
professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s
beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos
for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And
Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister,
an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian
troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are
severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another. 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a
remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of
colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the
ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly
evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked
this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic,
and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever
had.
 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Americanah (2013) by Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie
• Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-
ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for
America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to
grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet,
thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America
closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented
life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic
Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their
homeland.
 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Purple Hibiscus (2012) by Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie
• Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in
Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and
attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from
the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced
account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is
generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at
home—a home that is silent and suffocating.
 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Purple Hibiscus (2012) by Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie
• As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and
Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city,
where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s
authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air,
and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they
return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must
find the strength to keep her loved ones together.
 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Purple Hibiscus (2012) by Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie

• Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the

emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of
family, and the bright promise of freedom.
21st Century Literary Pieces

The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable
debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to
come out of Africa in years", with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it
powerfully evokes"; The Washington Post called her "the twenty-first-century
daughter of Chinua Achebe." Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an
instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her graceful
storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters' hearts - on
display. Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie
turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling
stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa
and the United States.
21st Century Literary Pieces

The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and
longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional
wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human
struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a
resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one
of our most essential writers.
21st Century Literary Pieces

The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• In "A Private Experience," a medical student hides from a violent riot with
a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the
realities and fears she's been pushing away. In "Tomorrow is Too Far," a
woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death.
The young mother at the center of "Imitation" finds her comfortable life in
Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his
mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking
loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be
nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her
desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to
reexamine them.
21st Century Literary Pieces

We Should All Be Feminists (2014) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We
Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her
much-viewed TEDx talk of the same name—by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
the award-winning author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 
• With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of
feminism for the twenty-first century—one rooted in inclusion and awareness.
She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious,
institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to
help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of
sexual politics.
 
21st Century Literary Pieces

We Should All Be Feminists (2014) by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences—in the U.S., in
her native Nigeria, and abroad—offering an artfully nuanced explanation of
why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike. 
• Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made
Adichie a bestselling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration
of what it means to be a woman today—and an of-the-moment rallying cry
for why we should all be feminists. 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi

• A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three
hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great
American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable
sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that
shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new
voice in contemporary fiction.
21st Century Literary Pieces

Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi

• Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in
eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives
in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to
Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons,
sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade,
and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be
raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants
through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations
wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization.
21st Century Literary Pieces

Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi

• The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the
plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the
coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of
twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present
day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and
stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in
the soul of a nation. 
21st Century Literary Pieces

Homegoing (2016) by Yaa Gyasi

• Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel

sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements
of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were
shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a
tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an
astonishingly gifted young writer. 
21st Century Literary Pieces

The Fishermen (2015)by Chigozie Obioma

• Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE
FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria,
in the small town of Akure. When their father has to travel to a distant city
for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go
fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades
the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings.
What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and
redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book's
characters and readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, THE
FISHERMEN is an essential novel about Africa, seen through the prism of
one family's destiny.