Negotiating the Global Literary Market

Abstract

Many examples of current African writing either deal with issues of migration and movement or with their characters’ lives in their African home, where they have to cope with several issues. This chapter proceeds from the assumption that ‘African literature’ is a category primarily defined by the literary institutions of the global North. This literature is constructed as a minority discourse on the global literary market and marketed as such, as African writers are classified according to the component elements of ‘African literature.’ A preliminary framework of criteria that African writers have to meet in order to be selected for publication and dissemination can be argued to include the features of cultural difference, marginality, anthropology, authenticity, politics and resistance, and mobility and migration. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie serves as a useful example to illustrate the ways the criteria of the global literary market manifest themselves in the works of diasporic African writers.