(Book Review) Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature

Joyce B. Ashuntantang. Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature. Langaa Publishers, 2009. 188 pages. Available on amazon.com and African Books Collective.

 Synopsis
This a foundational text on the production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature. The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as the official languages.

Ashuntantang shows that the pattern of production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature is not only framed by the minority status of English and English-speaking Cameroonians within the Republic of Cameroon, but is also a refl ection of a postcolonial reality in Africa where mostly African literary texts published by western multi-national corporations are assured wide international accessibility and readership.

This book establishes that in spite of these setbacks, Anglophone Cameroon writers have produced a corpus of work that has enriched the genres of prose, poetry and drama, and that these texts deserve a wider readership.

Reviews

“This text is a very useful supplement to Richard Bjornson’s The African Quest for Freedom and Identity, which concentrated primarily on literary texts from Francophone Cameroon. Dr. Ashuntantang, a skilled librarian, bibliographer and literary scholar, deals in depth with the environmental circumstances that have thwarted writers who have chosen to express themselves in English, but she shows how progress nevertheless has been made, particularly in recent years. This is the most comprehensive study of Anglophone Cameroon literature that has been published to date.”
Bernth Lindfors, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin.

“This study affi rms the vibrancy of Anglophone Cameroon literature; it proves beyond reasonable doubt that there is a great deal of published work out there, and that its landscape is not only national but equally diasporic. This text is an important milestone in Anglophone scholarship. It should be a required text for scholars with an interest in Anglophone Cameroon/ African Literature.”
Shadrack Ambanasom, Prof. of African Literature,E.N.S. Bambili/University of Yaounde I, Cameroon.

Comments

[Ambe Johnson]

Great to see a book that takes Anglophone literature out of the shadows. But this is not a one-way street. Maybe it is time for Cameroonians, particularly Anglophone Cameroonians, to start promoting their own literature. This morning, I stumbled across an announcement about a forthcoming collection of 23 short stories that included African literary giants such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Among that prestigious list was an Anglophone Cameroonian called Dipita Kwa, whom I have never heard about but who was good enough to appear on such an August collection. So what explains this situation? lack of promotion at home leading to writers to look for recognition beyond Cameroon's borders.

[Ambe Johnson]

The collection of short stories in question is "One World: A global anthology of short stories" edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri:

http://www.amazon.com/One-World-global-anthology-stories/dp/1906523134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238087383&sr=1-1

[DANGO TUMMA]

Wha is anglophone?

i thought any one who apeaks and [racrise aglosaxon culture, can be called anglophone?
why not call it british cameroon or
appropriately southern cameroons literature?
beeing politically correct makes fools of you, after all the two countries have yet sign a formal treaty unifying both since 1961