Vahni Capildeo: The Mother Tongue is an Evil Myth
Is there such thing as a single language? Capildeo's poetry emphasises linguistic multiplicity even in monoglot societies.
Contextualising politics of the South African Land Fear
Edna Mohamed is an MA Postcolonial Studies student at SOAS, University of London. Her current research examines de-linking practises and liberation movements within the cultural form from a Black feminist lens. Her other interests are in race studies, the Muslim diaspora, postcolonial environmentalism and gender studies. Contextualising the politics of the South
Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea
Wide Sargasso Sea is an important piece of literature because it encourages us to think about local and transnational literary space.
NourbeSe Philip and destroying the English language
Can the act of recycling the English language liberate those who have been snubbed by the hegemonic power? Is it a way of turning the master’s tools [...] against itself to be used as a device that dismantles the master’s unhinged, socially stratified house?
Somali
Aisha Afrah is a broadcast journalist at BBC World Service, she is a poet and a short fiction writer. Aisha has an M.A. in African Literature from SOAS University. Her interests include translation and multilingualism within the Somali territories. Her poetry explores themes such as home, womanhood, being a refugee and self-love. Dadka deegannada
Football and Migrant crises: Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique
Published in 2003, Fatou Diome’s début novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) followed a defining moment in modern Franco-Senegalese history: the 2002 Fifa World Cup.
Beyond conflicts, crises and catastrophes: Afro-Pessimism in Western Media
Rachel Tabea Bossmeyer criticizes the afro-pessimism of mainstream Western Media and its ties to colonial literary productions.
Multilingual Counterpoint in Nuruddin Farah’s Sardines
Tayseer Abu Odeh discusses how Somali writer Nuruddin Farah explores how to challenge narratives of history and power in his novel Sardines.
William Wellington Gqoba’s Isizwe Esinembali Xhosa Histories And Poetry (1873 – 1888)
Sanele Ntshingana recently received an honours degree in African languages from Rhodes University. He is now studying for an MA in African Languages with a focus on historical sociolinguistics. His research interests include Xhosa historiography, the making and unmaking of archive and the production of "history". The late eighteenth century southern seaboard
Sowing the seeds of subalternity in Somali Literature
Photograph of Afgoye, Somalia from 2013 (source: Wiki Commons) Mohamed A. Eno is professor and dean of African Studies at St. Clements University in Mogadishu, Somalia. His groundbreaking work uses literature, especially folk poetry, to challenge the myth of a homogenous Somalia and to expose the exclusion and