Introduction: African Narrative and The Christian Tradition: Storytelling and Identity

Susan VanZanten

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Introduction: African Narrative and The Christian Tradition: Storytelling and Identity
Susan VanZanten (bio)

Susan VanZanten

Seattle Pacific University

Susan VanZanten

Susan VanZanten is a Professor of English at Seattle Pacific University. Her work on Africa includes A Story of South Africa: J. M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context (Harvard, 1991); Postcolonial Literature and the Biblical Call for Justice (Mississippi, 2004); Truth and Reconciliation: The Confessional Mode in South African Literature (Heinemann, 2002), and an interview with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie in Image (2010). Her most recent publications are Joining the Mission: A Guide for (Mainly) New Faculty (Eerdmans, 2011) and Mending a Tattered Faith: Devotions with Dickinson (Cascade, 2010).

NOTES

1. A good overview of this early literature can be found in Killam and Rowe 240–41.

2. See Abbott.

3. See Ngũgĩ’s recent memoir for one example.

4. Achebe recalls some of these influences in Hopes and Impediments and, more recently, in The Education of a British-Protected Child.

5. The oral tradition of praise poems, eulogies, political comments, and love songs-along with European and African-American influences-contributed to the production of innovative poetic literature in the twentieth century, a topic which this issue does not explore.

6. SeeAshcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin.

WORKS CITED

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Google Scholar

Achebe, Chinua. The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Google Scholar

—. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. 1988. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Google Scholar

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back; Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature. London: Routledge, 1989.

Google Scholar

Hofmeyr, Isabel. The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003.

Google Scholar

JanMohamed, Abdul R. Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1983.

Google Scholar

Killam, Douglas and Ruth Rowe, eds. The Companion to African Literatures. Oxford: James Currey, 2000.

Google Scholar

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. New York: Pantheon, 2010.

Google Scholar

Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender. London: Routledge, 1994.

Google Scholar

...

Christianity & Literature