Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa by Lindsey B. Green-Simms (review)

The growth of automobile culture and automobility, described as the "automobile's promise of autonomous, unfettered mobility," intersect with literature, media, and film in Lindsey B. Green-Simms's work, Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa. Green-Simms weaves together modernity, freedom, and social relations throughout her work to emphasize that the car is not merely a means of transportation, but a status symbol and a metaphorical and literal representation of varied things to various people in West Africa.

Green-Simms begins her work with an overview of the history of West Africa—from 1898 through decolonization to the contemporary age—to create the backdrop to the artistic works she incorporates in subsequent chapters. At the beginning of the twentieth century, French colonial officials in West Africa alternately embraced and tried to impede the proliferation of automobiles, beginning with the celebration of the first automobile ride in West Africa in February 1900. During the interwar period, the introduction of Fords, along with driving and the newly organized professions associated with driving, made automobility much more feasible. Colonial governments began investing in infrastructure to promote modernization and motorization in the post–World War II era, and later, postdecolonization governments adopted the idea that infrastructure and technological advancement were the roads to modernization.

The second chapter opens with the fact that Nigeria has the world's highest fatality rate for automobile crashes. The chapter focuses on Wole Soyinka's play The Road, which centers on Nigerian truck drivers. The uncertainty and chaos of the road is entwined with Yoruba mythology and the story of Ogun, god of roads. The third and fourth chapters revolve around francophone and Nollywood cinema, respectively. African cinema, especially from the francophone countries, uses the car as a status symbol that represents things about the driver or owner. Ousmane Sembène's Xala (1974) and Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart (1992) portray cars as symbolic manifestations of problems experienced by the characters. The breakdown of El-Hadji's Mercedes-Benz in Xala serves as a sign of his impotence, and cars in Quartier Mozart serve as signs of the patriarchy. The fifth and final chapter subverts the generally male-dominated genre of automobility by focusing on feminist texts and integrating those works into popular patriarchal works. Green-Simms repurposes another film by Sembène, frequently called the father of African cinema, in her final chapter. Sembène's film Fait Kiné and Ama Ata Aidoo's novel Changes: A Love Story center women in automobility as a means to independence and autonomy, but as Green-Simms argues, not as a sign of upward mobility or Nollywood glamour, instead serving as a model for how car ownership affects the lives of middle-class African women.

Green-Simms expertly uses several examples from famous plays, novels, films, and popular videos to serve as vignettes of West African automobility and explain the cultural phenomenon of cars and how they serve as examples of the contradictions of modernization and globalization.