Evan Mwangi. Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. xiv + 346 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4384-2681-5.

Reviewed by Adeline Koh (Richard Stockton College)
Published on H-Africa (September, 2010)
Commissioned by Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia (Montclair State University)

African Writers Transcending Postcolonial Paradigms

Evan Mwangi. Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. xiv + 346 pp. $75 (Hardcover)  ISBN 978-1-4384-2681-5.

Ewan Mwangi’s book, Africa Writes Back to Self, argues that in the last thirty years contemporary African literature has undergone a paradigm shift which remains unaccounted for within current literary criticism. Taking Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, and Gareth Griffith’s 1989 classic The Empire Writes Back as a starting point, Mwangi claims that, counter to the predominant argument within postcolonial theory, which holds that African literature has been obsessed with “writing back” to an imagined colonial center, since the mid-1980s, African novels have become primarily interested in dialoguing with other African texts rather than with an external audience.

In order to prove his case, Mwangi focuses his argument on two aspects of contemporary African literature: the genre of metafiction, and the representation of gender within African novels. He argues that since the 1980s, the metafictional genre has become ubiquitous in East African literature--and its use indicates that African writers are more interested in local culture and politics than in “writing back” to an imagined West. For Mwangi, the prevalence of metafiction in African writing indicates the emergence of a heightened sense of self-referentiality, as metafictional novels are intertextual, dialoguing with other texts in order to constitute their own messages. Mwangi also argues that the metafictional genre is particularly important when viewing the relationship of Africans to gender, arguing that often African writers make use of metafictional techniques in order to assert subversive messages against punitively homophobic state regimes, and to demonstrate the complexity of the present African cultural landscape.

Mwangi’s book is divided into eight chapters. The first begins by charting a genealogy of the metafictional novel in African literature, and the second proceeds by discussing the role of gender in what he calls the “nationalist canon,” the first generation of modern African literature produced between the 1960s and 1970s. He then goes on to demonstrate how the contemporary novel written in Kiswahili, a language spoken in Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Tanzania, and some parts of central Africa, has definitive metafictional traits. Mwangi next extends his argument by applying his theory to oral texts, arguing that writers such as Grace Ogot, Margaret Ogola, and Nurrudin Farrar make use of orature in order to rework foundational myths and epic conventions. In his fifth chapter, Mwangi explores how African novels are “palimpsests rewriting earlier written literature from the continent” (p. 137), and in his sixth chapter, discusses how visual arts relate to gender politics in Africa through discussions of novels by Yvonne Vera, Zakes Mda, Henrietta Rose-Innes, and Bessie Head. Chapter 7 conducts a discussion of how African novelists make use of metafictional techniques to construct fiction about homosexuality in order to escape state censors. The book ends with a discussion of the importance of incorporating indigenous African feminist theory in understanding the role of gender in African society.

Perhaps the most important contribution made by Africa Writes Back to Self is its concentration on East African literature, which as Mwangi points out, has been greatly overshadowed by a concentration on West African literature. However, while Mwangi focuses on East African literature as a case study, a number of important South African writers also populate his analysis (J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Vera, and Nozipo Maraire, for example). This theoretical move allows him to extend his argument to African literature more generally. In addition, his discussion of works written in African languages is a useful contribution to scholarship on African literature. Chapter 3, which concentrates on the growth of the contemporary Kiswahili novel, is a good example, as it brings into discussion works that have not reached the world market as easily as novels written in English or French. Mwangi’s discussion of the novels such as Kyallo Wamatili’s Bina-Amadu! (2002) (translated as “Son of Adam/Human Being/Oppressor of the Humans”), and Katama Mkangi’s novel Mafuta (1984) (translated as “fats/ointments/oils/riches”) is testament to how these novels critique neocolonial regimes and the problem of environmental degradation in different parts of Africa. These discussions help to reiterate Mwangi’s main argument that contemporary novelists are interested not merely in “writing back” to an imagined Western audience, but in articulating the problems involved in local conditions.

The main argument within Africa Writes Back to Self is concurrent with an emerging trend within African studies that asserts that the contemporary indigenous African novelist’s primary concern is with local political conditions rather than with a global audience. This view is put forth by Ranka Primorac in her book on modern Zimbabwean writing, The Place of Tears: The Novel and Politics in Modern Zimbabwe (2006). It is also paralleled by Erik Falk’s Subject and History in Selected Works by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Yvonne Vera and David Dabydeen (2007), in which Falk argues that contemporary African writers are not engaged with writing back to the center, but with conflictual layers of subjectivity in their various postcolonial contexts.

Africa Writes Back to Self is a solid contribution along the lines of this paradigm, and its emphasis on texts written in local African languages makes it particularly useful. Its combination of reading established African writers alongside more locally known authors provides an uncommon insight into East African literature, making it good reading for scholars wishing to broaden their horizons on various aspects of contemporary African literature.

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Citation: Adeline Koh. Review of Mwangi, Evan, Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. September, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29413

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