Forms of Mobility

Presents alternative categories of fiction through which to examine how contemporary writers have envisaged Africa’s changing literary terrains

Stephanie Bosch Santana analyzes southern African writers’ experimentations with literary form in periodical print and digital media since the mid-twentieth century in order to offer an alternative account of contemporary African imaginations of mobility. Based on an understudied archive of texts in English and Chichewa/Nyanja from Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, Forms of Mobility: Genre, Language, and Media in African Literary Cultures examines new, noncanonical categories of fiction, including migrant forms, township tales, weekend stories, and digital diaries. These generically, linguistically, and geographically mobile forms map changing ideas of interconnection and belonging. By reading them “in motion,” as they travel across space, time, genre, and language and between publications and platforms, Bosch Santana limns multiple centers of literary influence and relation across southern African and Black diasporas, revealing forms of literary mobility and space making that are occluded by current models of world literature.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reading in Motion
Chapter 1. Migrant Forms: African Parade’s (Trans)national Central Africa
Chapter 2. Township Tales: From “Here to Yonder” to “Lusaka After Dark”
Chapter 3. Weekend Stories: Gender, Mobility, and Form in the Malawi News
Chapter 4. Time Machines: Pan African Imaginaries in the ChimurengaChronic and Jungle Jim
Chapter 5. Digital Diaries: The World of Facebook and Beyond
Epilogue: Old and New Forms of Mobility
Notes
Bibliography

Stephanie Bosch Santana is an assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Illustrations	6 b&w halftones
Pages	288
Date Published	15 Nov 2024
Publisher	Northwestern University Press
Series	FlashPoints
Language	English
Dimensions	229 x 152

"Forms of Mobility explores popular forms of literature that have appeared in South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia from 1950 to the present and remains impressive as the author argues that mapping alternative literary terrains requires that we work with an expanded range of genres and languages. This is a significant work and a major contribution for scholars within and well outside of the African Studies field."—Frieda Ekotto, University of Michigan

“Forms of Mobility is an important book that fills a vital gap in literary scholarship and produces new understandings of genre and form. It is thoughtful, deeply researched, multilingual, and beautifully written.”—Madhu Krishnan, University of Bristol