China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African Literature

Book excerpt: China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century African Literature unpacks the long-standing complexity of exchanges between Africans and Chinese as far back as the Cold War and beyond. This scope encompasses how China, which emerged as a main engine of the world economy by the end of the twentieth century, has transformed patterns of globalization across the continent. In this ground-breaking work on cultural representations, Duncan M. Yoon examines the controversial symbol of China in African literature. He reads acclaimed authors like Kofi Awoonor, Henri Lopes, and Bessie Head, as well as contemporary writers, including Ufrieda Ho, Kwei Quartey, and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Each chapter focuses on a genre such as poetry, detective fiction, memoir, and the novel, drawing out themes like resource extraction, diaspora, gender, and race. Yoon demonstrates how African creative voices grapple with and make meaning out of the possibilities and limitations of globalization in an increasingly multipolar world.