pt. 1. Backgrounds. Africa and writing / Alain Ricard
Sub-Saharan Africa's literary history in a nutshell / Albert S. Gerard
Politics, culture, and literary form / Bernth Lindfors
African literature in Portuguese / Russell G. Hamilton
North African writing / Anissa Talahite
A continent and its literatures in French / Jonathan Ngate
African literature and the colonial factor / Simon Gikandi
African literature: myth or reality? / V. Y. Mudimbe
pt. 2. Orality, literacy, and the interface. Africa and orality/ Liz Gunner
Orality, literacy, and African literature / Abiola Irele
Oral literature and modern African literature / Isidore Okpewho
Women's oral genres / Mary E. Modupe Kolawole
The oral artist's script / Harold Schenb
pt. 3. Writer, writing, and function. The novelist as teacher: the truth of fiction / Chinua Achebe
The truth of fiction / Chinua Achebe
Three in a bed: fiction, morals, and politics / Nadine Gordimer
Nobel lecture / Naguib Mahfouz
Redefining relevance / Njabulo S. Ndebele
Preparing ourselves for freedom / Albie Sachs
pt. 4. Creativity in/and adversarial contexts. A voice that would not be silenced / Wole Soyinka
Exile and creativity: a prolonged writer's block / Micere Githae Mugo
Containing cockroaches (memories of incarceration reconstructed in exile) / Jack Mapanje
Writing against neo-Colonialism / Ngugi wa Thiong'O
The writer and responsibility / Breyten Breytenbach
Dissidence and creativity / Nawal El Saadawi
Culture beyond color: A South African dilemma / Zoe Wicomb
In praise of exile / Nurrudin Farah
The African writer's experience of European literature / D. Marechera
pt. 5. On nativism and the quest for indigenous aesthetics: negritude and traditionalism. Negritude: a humanism of the twentieth century / Leopold S. Senghor
What is negritude? / Abiola Irele
Negritude and a new Africa: an update / Peter S. Thompson
Prodigals, come home! / Chinweizu
Neo-tarzanism: the poetics of pseudo-tradition / Wole Soyinka
My signifier is more native than yours: issues in making a literature African / Adeleke Adeeko
Out of Africa: topologies of nativism / Kwame Anthony Appiah
On national culture / Frantz Fanon
True and false pluralism / Paulin Hountondji
"An open letter to Africans" c/o The Punic One-Party State / Sony Labou Tansi
Resistance theory/theorizing resistance or two cheers for nativism / Benita Parry
pt. 6. The language of African literature. The dead end of African literature? / Obiajunwa Wali
The language of African literature / Ngugi wa Thiong'O
Anamnesis in the language of writing / Assia Djebar
African-language literature: tragedy and hope / Daniel P. Kunene
pt. 7. On genres. Background to the West African novel / Emmanuel N. Obiechina
Languages of the novel: a lover's reflections / Andre Brink
Realism and naturalism in African fiction / Neil Lazarus
"Who am I?": fact and fiction in African first-person narrative/ Mineke Schipper
Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa / Tejumola Olaniyan
The fourth stage: through the mysteries of Ogun to the origin of Yoruba tragedy / Wole Soyinka
Introduction to "King Oedipus" / Tawfiq Al-Hakim
Poetry as dramatic performance / Kofi Anyidoho
"Azikwelwa" (we will not ride): politics and value in black South African poetry / Anne McClintock
Revolutionary practice and style in Lusophone liberation poetry / Emmanuel Ngara
pt. 8. Theorizing the criticism of African literature. Academic problems and critical techniques / Eldred D. Jones
African literature, western critics / Rand Bishop
A formal approach to African literature / Kenneth W. Harrow
African absence, a literature without a voice / Ambroise Kom
The nature of things: arrested decolonization and critical theory / Biodun Jeyifo
Reading through western eyes / Christopher L. Miller
Inherited mandates in African literary criticism: the intrinsic paradigm / Olakunle George
Exclusionary practices in African literary criticism / Florence Stratton
pt. 9. Marxism. Towards a Marxist sociology of African literature / Omafume F. Onoge
Writers in politics: the power of words and the words of power / Ngugi wa Thiong'O
National liberation and culture / Amilcar Cabral
Concerning national culture / Agostinho Neto
Masks and Marx: the Marxist ethos vis-a-vis African revolutionary theory and praxis / Ayi Kwei Armah
Marxist aesthetics: an open-ended legacy / Chidi Amuta
Pt. 10. Feminism. To be an African woman writer-an overview and a detail / Ama Ata Aidoo
The heroine in Arab literature / Nawal El Saadawi
Women and creative writing in Africa / Flora Nwapa
African motherhood-Myth and reality / Lauretta Ngcobo
Stiwanism: feminism in an African context / Molara Ogundipe-Leslie
Feminism with a small "f"! / Buchi Emecheta
Writing near the bone / Yvonne Vera
Some notes on African feminism / Carole Boyce Davies
Bringing African women into the classroom: rethinking pedagogy and epistemology / Obioma Nnaemeka
Enlightenment epistemology and the invention of polygyny / Uzo Esonwanne
Feminism, postcolonialism and the contradictory orders of modernity / Ato Quayson
pt. 11. Structuralism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. Genetic structuralism as a critical technique (notes toward a sociological theory of the African novel) / Sunday O. Anozie
In praise of alienation / Abiola Irele
In the wake of colonialism and modernity / Biodun Jeyifo
Poststructuralism and postcolonial discourse / Simon Gikandi
Subjectivity and history: derrida in Algeria / Robert J. C. Young
The angel of progress: pitfalls of the term "post-colonialism" / Anne McClintock
Postmodernity, postcoloniality, and African studies / Tejumola Olaniyan
Postcolonialism and postmodernism / Ato Quayson
Is the post- in postmodernism the post- in postcolonial? / Kwame Anthony Appiah
Postmodernism and black writing in South Africa / Lewis Nkosi
African language literature and postcolonial criticism / Karin Barber
pt. 12. Ecocriticism. Ecoing the other(s): the call of global green and black African responses / William Slaymaker
Different shades of green: ecocriticism and African literature / Byron Caminero-Santangelo
Ecological postcolonialism in African women's literature / Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Environmentalism and postcolonialism / Rob Nixon
pt. 13. Queer, postcolonial. "Wheyting be dat?": the treatment of homosexuality in African literature / Chris Dunton
Out in Africa / Gaurav Desai
Toward a lesbian continuum? Or reclaiming the erotic / Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Queer futures: The coming-out novel in South Africa / Brenna Munro.
