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Many of us who love literature might like to think of it as untethered from the mundane aspects of the real world, but books emerge and circulate in a literary market much like other markets, and literary value – however one might define it – is definitely not the sole determinant of what gets a book published and read.
more...Nana Oforiatta Ayim’s prose in her debut novel The God Child feels like poetry: vivid, associative, beautiful – and sometimes a little confusing. The story navigates between Ghana, Germany and the UK, following its young protagonist Maya from childhood to her early twenties, and is a narrative rich in history, complicity and complicated relationships.
more...London Vayavong talks to Abeer Ali about her projects Hescheck Bescheck and The Unfamiliar. The Berlin-based artist collaborates with women of diverse backgrounds to create music, dance, theatre and other forms of storytelling.
more...Recitatif is a writerly experiment that sees the acclaimed Toni Morrison toying with her reader as she frames an insightful commentary on racial categorizations. First published in 1983, it is famously the only short story the Nobel-laureate ever wrote.
more...With a confrontational title, the message of the book is pretty straight-forward and ambitious. The text is a long essay which consists of a set of guidelines that offers white people a way to confront systemic racism that does not fall into historically cliched and ineffectual advice.
more...This Mournable Body is undoubtedly an important book, but it’s more than a little difficult to read. The deservedly renowned Zimbabwean novelist, filmmaker and playwright Tsitsi Dangarembga presents a devastating portrait of her country after independence has finally been achieved, but has failed to produce the equitable utopia that the struggle seemed to promise would follow liberation from colonial oppression.
more...My favourite thing about this book is the way it approaches serious problems with a light touch, while still granting them their gravity.
more...One of our aims with poco.lit. is to try to demystify some of the core ideas in and around postcolonial studies and the ways in which postcolonial literatures have been read. In this post, we take a look at Orientalism by Edward Said and some of its key contributions to thinking about colonial practices.
more...The first thing I liked about this book was its title, and the novel certainly delivers on the sensuous and sensory promises made by these four words placed alongside each other: Butter, honey, pig, bread.
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