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Now Available: Groundbreaking Book on Anglophone Cameroon Literature by Joyce Ashuntantang

Joyce B. Ashuntantang. Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature. Langaa Publishers, 2009. 188 pages. Available on amazon.com and African Books Collective.

  This is a foundational text on the production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature. The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as the official languages.

Ashuntantang shows that the pattern of production and dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon literature is not only framed by the minority status of English and English-speaking Cameroonians within the Republic of Cameroon, but is also a refl ection of a postcolonial reality in Africa where mostly African literary texts published by western multi-national corporations are assured wide international accessibility and readership.

This book establishes that in spite of these setbacks, Anglophone Cameroon writers have produced a corpus of work that has enriched the genres of prose, poetry and drama, and that these texts deserve a wider readership.

Sarah Palin: A poem for women

 By Joyce Ashuntantang

She can kill a moose, I can’t

She touts a gun, I hate guns

She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine

She’s white and privileged

I’m black and sidelined

But I will not join the laughter

I will not cast a stone

The flower between her legs connects us

 

We have been stoned as heretics in Europe

We have been given up at birth in China

We were killed as witches in Salem

We were refused land in Africa

We are property in Pakistan

We have been killed for honor in Bangladesh

We have been raped and maimed the world over

And so I will not nail her

 

The bumps on her chest connect us

Me, Hilary and Amina Lawal.

We’ve been refused equal pay

We’ve been forced to hide our belly bumps

We’ve been hanged by our PMS*

We’ve been judged by our lipstick

We’ve been dared to grow a penis

We’ve been called nutcrackers

And so I will not stone her

 

 

Let her deeds hand the stones

Let her words nail her

Let her faults trip her

And you can call me what you will:

Fuckn’ Femminist

 

* Pre-menstrual syndrome