09:00 - 10:30
Room: Arts – Lecture Room 7
Stream: African Literature: Communities, Collaborations, Crafts & Crossings
Chair/s:
Rachel Bower
Literary Tourism and Literary Encounter
Jarad Zimbler
University of Birmingham, Birmingham

This paper considers the case of three authors – Richard Wright, Guy Butler, and Kamau Brathwaite – who travelled to West Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s, drawn in part by the prospect and then reality of decolonization. Their experiences of Ghana and of Nigeria, and especially their encounters with cultural institutions and aesthetic practices, prompted creative acts; but only Brathwaite engages with explicitly literary practices. In fact, both Wright and Butler seem to make a concerted effort to ignore, obscure or efface the existence of local literary cultures, even whilst appropriating certain of their resources. As such, by considering each of these authors in turn, and by focusing on Wright’s Black Power, Butler’s ‘Bronze Heads’ and Brathwaite’s ‘Poems from Ghana’ and ‘Ananse and the Dinner Drum’, it becomes possible to explore a number of concepts central to our understanding of literary belonging, including field, material and relationality.


Reference:
We-A08 African Literature-P-001
Presenter/s:
Jarad Zimbler
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Arts – Lecture Room 7
Chair/s:
Rachel Bower
Date:
Wednesday, 12 September
Time:
09:00 - 09:15
Session times:
09:00 - 10:30