In the nearly forty years since independent governments assumed power in Africa and the Caribbean, the literatures of these regions have established themselves. Professor of English and Comparative Literature Simon Gikandi highlights this change in a forthcoming compendium, the Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature, which he is co-editing with Abiola Irele at Ohio State University. Cambridge University Press publishes several histories of literature organized by region. A few years ago, the press approached Professors Gikandi and Irele and asked them to edit a collection of essays about African and Caribbean literary traditions. The idea was to construct a book that was fairly comprehensive, covering the old and the new.
Finances are limited, and the subject matter is broad.
We decided to divide the compendium into three main parts. One part is divided by region and language. Another section is thematic. The third section is theoretical and focuses on topics like the influence the language of the medium has on expression, colonial culture, and related topics. From an editor's perspective, the challenge is to introduce some uniformity or consistency across the chapters authors submit.