A postcolonial ecocritical reading of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) and Kwakuvi Azasu’s The Slave Raiders (2004)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8075415 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rogers Asempasah (0000-0003-1272-1211, University of Cape Coast, corresponding author), Christabel Aba Sam (0000-0002-7926-0395, University of Cape Coast), Bertrand Azagsizua Abelumkemah (University of Cape Coast) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cogent Arts and Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2331-1983 • E-ISSN: 2331-1983 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23311983.2022.2145669 |
| OpenAlex | W4309402031 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 12 |
African literature has suffered a great deal of scathing criticism, especially from western critics and scholars, who believe that Black African writers and critics have repeatedly focused on trite themes and subject matters of colonial/postcolonial nature at the expense of the global environmental crises. This paper then, which is partly a response to this criticism, focuses on two novels, namely, Azasu’s The Slave Raiders (2004) and Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), texts that yield themselves to postcolonial ecocritical reflections. Situated in the postcolonial ecocritical theory and using content analysis, the paper reveals that colonization and slavery, as the two texts show, have left some incontestable damage to the natural landscape of colonized Gold Coast, now Ghana. The wilderness has disappeared and the specimens of animal species are trafficked leading to some considerable damage to the ecosystems. However, these ecological hazards are subordinated in postcolonial thematic issues such as resistance to slavery, trauma, memory, and healing. The paper contributes to scholarship on the emerging discipline of postcolonial ecocriticism in the African context
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Criticism · Ecocriticism · Environmental ethics · Literary criticism · Literature · Political science · Postcolonialism (international relations · Resistance (ecology · Scholarship · Situated · Sociology · Subject (documents · Wilderness · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction · Ecology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy
Re-storying Nature
Ecological sensibility and the pursuit of progress in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow
Between tradition and modernity
Nature as a symbiotic edge of humanity
Rekindling Eco-Ubuntu in Sicelo Mbatha’s Black Lion
This Ain’t the Way It’s S’posed to Be”
Memory, Akan cosmology, and elementality in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing
Hopegoing
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |