The aqueous form and the Afro–Sino encounter in Yvonne Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough a focused study of Kenyan writer Yvonne Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea, this article seeks to develop an aqueous hermeneutics of Africa–China literatures. Such a reading practice highlights the waterways that fundamentally shape Afro–Sino relations but have not been properly theorized in oceanic studies or Global South studies and challenges the ways we think about global connectivity and its associated genre – world literature. Owuor uses an aqueous form to tackle the Afro–Sino encounter’s complex temporalities – its maritime connections in antiquity, its present moment in capitalist modernity, and its unpredictable futures. Furthermore, her novel draws on water’s materiality to respond to the unevenly powered global literary market. Using Owuor as a starting point, this article considers whether the Indo-Pacific waters might offer a generative frame for cross-cultural comparisons, complicate the dominant paradigm of Afro–Sino literary studies, and integrate Chinese/sinophone maritime fiction and Indian Ocean literature of the anglophone and francophone worlds.