Project on New African Literatures

 

A Message from Pius Adesanmi, Founder and Director of PONAL

 

This is a very exciting time to set up and assume the Directorship of PONAL at Carleton University. PONAL joins a number of significant institutional initiatives that have seen Carleton consolidate its position in recent years as one of the leading sites of Africanist scholarship in Canada. PONAL aims to be the first institutional project to devote its resources and attention exclusively to the promotion of research on an expansive corpus of creative works produced, in the main, by writers born just before, in, or after 1960, the emblematic year of African independence from colonialism. The global literary community, especially the Euro-American academy, has now begun to reckon with this trend in African writing owing to the phenomenal successes recorded in the past decade by Anglophone writers like Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Sefi Attah, Moses Isegagwa, Biyi Bandele, Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Segun Afolabi; and Francophone writers like Abdourahman Ali Waberi, Calixthe Beyala, Fatou Diome, Sami Tchak, and Kossi Effoui. Nigeria’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Alain Mabanckou of the Republic of Congo have recently consolidated the international reputation of this generation of African writers by winning the 2007 Orange Prize and the 2007 Prix Renaudot respectively.

 

Yet, these international successes do not even begin to reflect the scope of continental developments that have come under such critical rubrics as third generation writing (in Nigeria), migritude writing (in Francophone Africa), post-apartheid or post-trauma writing (in southern Africa), and post-Uhuru writing (in Eastern Africa). For instance, the international glitz accorded the third generation Nigerian novel by the commendable efforts of Adichie, Habila, Abani, and Attah, masks almost two decades of an unprecedented effervescence of third generation poetry spearheaded by such brilliant poets as Ifowodo, Maxim Uzor Uzoatu, Afam Akeh, Uche Nduka, Remi Raji, Chiedu Ezeanah, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel, Lola Shoneyin, Obi Nwakanma, and PONAL’s Amatoritsero Ede. PONAL will stimulate and disseminate work on such phenomenal continental developments as a way of bridging the gap that has continued to bifurcate the broader field of African Studies along continental and diasporic lines.

 

Our primary responsibility, therefore, is to build upon the present African Studies momentum at Carleton to forge a convivial atmosphere for work on the new literary processes that are emerging in Africa. PONAL will actively establish research collaborations with institutions and individuals in Africa and Euro-America. Our  activities may be found on this self-explanatory website. However, we wish to draw attention to the following:

 

Promotion and Dissemination of Research: As resources allow, PONAL will organize the usual run of seminars, workshops, and symposia to bring together the growing clan of critics, who now work on new African literatures. Such exercises will pay attention to the need to bridge the numerous divides – continent/Diaspora, Anglophone/Francophone, writer/critic – that continues to mine the field.

 

PONAL will convene/sponsor special panels on its area of predilection at the big annual African literature and African studies meetings in Canada and the United States.

 

PONAL will initiate special issues of well-known refereed journals to advance scholarship on third generation African literatures. To this end, I co-edited in May 2005, a special issue of English in Africa on third generation Nigerian poetry with Chris Dunton. Professor Dunton and I are also currently co-editing a special issue of Research in African Literatures on third generation Nigerian novel. A special issue of Comparative Literature Studies, which I will co-edit with two other colleagues, is also in the pipeline.

 

The PONAL Collection: The decade starting from the mid-1980s is crucial to the emergence of the literary current at the heart of PONAL’s activities. The bulk of the works – especially poetry – published during that crucial period are mostly the efforts of small Presses in sub-Saharan Africa. PONAL has commenced a robust book acquisition drive, the aim of which is to build a formidable library of rare, hard-to-find third generation books published in Africa – or elsewhere. Book donations are welcome from authors/African publishers who have publications falling into this category.

 

Other valuable resources on the website include Gboungboun, our innovative quarterly literary news magazine, an audio library that will expand with time, as well as information on African literature faculty in Canada.  We thank you for taking the time to visit our website.

 

If you cannot find the information you require on these pages, please contact:

 

Project on New African Literatures

1812 Dunton Tower
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada,
K1S 5B6

Phone: (613) 520-2310

Fax: (613) 520-3544

email: info@projectponal.com