The PSA Newsletter #32 explores and reflects on the ways in which postcolonial and indigenous authors “reinvent the enemy’s language” by appropriating Western literary traditions – whether in format or in content – in order to challenge mainstream Western perspectives, expose colonial legacies, and bring to the fore their ontologies and cultural practices.
The newsletter opens with five original contributions. Caitlin H. Cronin explores the ways in which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie challenges traditionally Western formats such as the bildungsroman and the language of the empire through an analysis of Purple Hibiscus. Wally Suphap and Jason Ueda reflect on the pedagogical role of Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings and the ways in which these essays help students engage with key concepts such as linguistic justice, translanguaging, and code-meshing, as well as challenging standard English hegemony. Mohammad-Hossein Abedi-Valoojerdi draws attention to Nick Joaquin’s literary production, highlighting how the Filipino writer appropriates the language of the colonizer to create a distinctive style of English known as Joaquinesque, thus resisting the erasure of Filipino identity.
Francesca Pierini discusses Junauda Petrus’s The Stars and the Blackness Between Them in conjunction with John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, specifically placing emphasis on Petrus’s deconstruction of the tropes of linear storytelling, realistic writing, and heterosexuality. Focusing on the concept of translation in Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony, Seyoung Kim examines how poetry can serve as an autopoietic force to disrupt language standardisation in the Western literary canon, whilst simultaneously bringing to the fore Korean history and the coexistence, as well as the variations, of multiple languages.
Next, readers can find Adwoa Tiwaah Ofori Atakorah’s book review of Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities by Mahmood Mamdani (2020) and Dikko Yusuf’s book review of This Fiction Called Nigeria: The Struggle for Democracy by Adéwálé Májà-Pearce (2024). This issue also features Luca Raimondi’s report on his PSA-funded research visit (PSA General Research Fund) to southern India to complete two case studies and gather research material for a book project emerging from his doctoral dissertation, and the editors’ interviews with 2023 PSA/JPW Essay Prize Winner Ogochukwu Ukwueze and & Runner-Up Jade Jenkinson.
The final section of the newsletter includes information about the call for the next issue and useful contacts.
Happy reading, and best wishes,
Francesca and Jennifer
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