Asian African Literatures: Genealogies in the Making

This essay contextualizes the Special Issue on Asian African Literatures by first discussing the terminology of “Asian” in the context of African identities. It then presents a brief genealogy of Asian African literary production in East and South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. While a number of scholars have increasingly paid attention to Asian writing in Africa since the 1960s, less is known about such literary activities in earlier decades. I present in this article some possible avenues for such research and highlight the theatrical and poetic engagements of Indians in those decades. The final part of the essay contextualizes the individual contributions to the volume and serves as a reading map for the volume.