A New Generation of African Writers : Migration, Material Culture & Language by Brenda Cooper

It is timely for the author to examine some of the extraordinary work which has recently appeared from authors who have grown up or passed their early adult years out of Africa. The Orange Prize for Fiction was awarded in London 2007 to Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. The Caine Prize for African Writing has introduced other new writers to agents and publishers. Migration is a central theme of much African fiction written in English. Brenda Cooper tracks the journeys undertaken by a new generation of African writers, their protagonists and the solid objects that populate their fiction, to depict the material realities of their multiple worlds and languages. Postcolonial migrant writers encounter the globalised landscapes of the streets of Brixton, New York or Central Station Amsterdam, which have themselves been transformed by the colonial encounter. They write these changes back into their fiction, offering new ways of understanding the world. The writers' challenge is to find an English that can effectively express their many lives, languages and identities.