Literature for Our Times

Book excerpt: Literature for Our Times offers the widest range of essays on present and future directions in postcolonial studies ever gathered together in one volume. Demonstrating the capacity of different approaches and methodologies to ‘live together’ in a spirit of ‘convivial democracy’, these essays range widely across regions, genres, and themes to suggest the many different directions in which the field is moving. Beginning with an engagement with global concerns such as world literatures and cosmopolitanism, translation, diaspora and migrancy, established and emerging critics demonstrate the ways in which postcolonial analysis continues to offer valuable ways of analysing the pressing issues of a globalizing world. The field of Dalit studies is added to funda¬mental interests in gender, race, and indigeneity, while the neglected site of the post¬colonial city, the rising visibility of terrorism, and the continuing importance of trauma and loss are all addressed through an analysis of particular texts. In all of these ap¬proaches, the versatility and adaptability of postcolonial theory is seen at its most energetic. Contributors: Satish Aikant, Jeannette Armstrong, John Clement Ball, Elena Basile, Nela Bureu Ramos, Debjani Ganguly, K.A. Geetha, Henry A. Giroux, John C. Hawley, Sissy Helff, Feroza Jussawalla, Chelva Kanaganayakam, Dorothy Lane, Pamela McCallum, Sam McKegney, Michaela Moura–Koçoğlu, Angelie Multani, Kavita Ivy Nandan, Stephen Ney, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mumia G. Osaaji, Marilyn Adler Papayanis, Summer Pervez, Fred Ribkoff, Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, Anjali Gera Roy, Frank Schulze–Engler, Paul Sharrad, Lincoln Z. Shlensky, K. Satyanarayana, Vandana Saxena, P. Sivakami, Pilar Somacarrera, Susan Spearey, Cheryl Stobie, Robert J.C. Young