The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing

The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing provides a comprehensive historical overview of the diverse literary traditions impacting on this field's evolution, from the eighteenth century to the present. Drawing on the expertise of over forty international experts, this book gathers innovative scholarship to look forward to new readings and perspectives, while also focusing on undervalued writers, texts, and research areas. Creating new pathways to engage with the naming of a field that has often been contested, readings of literary texts are interwoven throughout with key political, social, and material contexts. In making visible the diverse influences constituting past and contemporary British literary culture, this Cambridge History makes a unique contribution to British, Commonwealth, postcolonial, transnational, diasporic, and global literary studies, serving both as one of the first major reference works to cover four centuries of black and Asian British literary history and as a compass for future scholarship.

Introduction Susheila Nasta and Mark U. Stein; Part I. New Formations: The Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century: Preface; 1. Narratives of resistance in the literary archives of slavery Markman Ellis; 2. Writer-travellers and fugitives: insider-outsiders Antoinette Burton; 3. Exoticisations of the self: the first 'Buddha of Suburbia' Mona Narain; 4. Black people of letters: authors, activists, abolitionists Vincent Carretta; 5. Engaging the public: photo- and print-journalism Pallavi Rastogi; Part II. Uneven Histories: Charting Terrains in the Twentieth Century: Preface; Section 1. Global Locals: Making Tracks at the Heart of Empire: 6. Between the wars: Caribbean, Pan-African, and Asian networks Delia Jarrett-Macauley and Susheila Nasta; 7. Mobile modernisms: black and Asian articulations Anna Snaith; 8. Establishing material platforms in literary culture in the 1930s and 1940s Ruvani Ranasinha; 9. Transnational cultural exchange: the BBC as contact zone James Procter; 10. Political autobiography and life-writing: Gandhi, Nehru, Kenyatta, and Naidu Javed Majeed; 11. Staging early black and Asian drama in Britain Colin Chambers; Section 2. Disappointed Citizens: The Pains and Pleasures of Exile: 12. Looking back, looking forward: revisiting the Windrush myth Alison Donnell; 13. Double displacements, diasporic attachments: location and accommodation J. Dillon Brown; 14. Wide-angled modernities and alternative metropolitan imaginaries Mpalive-Hangson Msiska; 15. Forging collective identities: the Caribbean artists movement and the emergence of black Britain Chris Campbell; 16. Breaking new ground: many tongues, many forms Ashok Bery; 17. The lure of postwar London: networks of people, print, and organisations Gail Low; 18. Looking beyond, shifting the gaze: writers in motion Bénédicte Ledent; Section 3. Here to Stay: Forging Dynamic Alliances: 19. Sonic solidarities: the dissenting voices of dub Henghameh Saroukhani; 20. Vernacular voices: fashioning idiom and poetic form Sarah Lawson Welsh; 21. Narratives of survival: social realism and civil rights Chris Weedon; 22. Black and Asian British theatre taking the stage: from the 1950s to the millennium Meenakshi Ponnuswami; 23. The writer and the critic: conversations between literature and theory Vijay Mishra; 24. Forging connections: anthologies, collectives, and the politics of inclusion Nicola L. Abram; 25. Reading the 'black' in the 'Union Jack': institutionalising black and Asian British writing Roger Bromley; Part III. Writing the Contemporary: Preface; Section 4. Looking Back, Looking Forward: 26. Diasporic translocations: many homes, multiple forms Peter Morey; 27. Reinventing the nation: black and Asian British representations John McLeod; 28. Reclaiming the past: Black and Asian British genealogies Tobias Döring; 29. Expanding realism, thinking new worlds Tabish Khair; 30. Writing lives, inventing selves: Black and Asian women's life-writing Ole Birk Laursen; 31. Black and Asian women's poetry: writing across generations Denise deCaires Narain; Section 5. Framing New Visions: 32. Through a different lens: drama, film, new media, and television Florian Stadtler; 33. Children's literature and the construction of contemporary multicultures Susanne Reichl; 34. Redefining the boundaries: black and Asian queer desire Kate Houlden; 35. Prizing otherness: black and Asian British writing in the global marketplace Sarah Brouillette and John R. Coleman; 36. Frontline fictions: popular forms from crime to grime Felipe Espinoza Garrido and Julian Wacker; 37. Reimagining Africa: contemporary figurations by African Britons Madhu Krishnan; 38. Post-secular perspectives: writing and fundamentalisms Rehana Ahmed; 39. Post-ethnicity and the politics of positionality Sara Upstone; Select bibliography; Index.

Susheila Nasta is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the founding Editor of Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing. A pioneer in the field of postcolonial writing, she received an MBE for her services to black and Asian literatures in 2011. She has published over thirteen books, directed major award-winning research projects, and judged numerous literary prizes.
Mark U. Stein is Professor of English, Postcolonial, and Media Studies at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany where he founded the interdisciplinary M.A. in National and Transnational Studies. His research interests include diaspora, transnational, and postcolonial studies. He has published ten books, including Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation (2004) and Locating African European Studies: Interventions, Intersections, Conversations (with Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Caroline Koegler and Deborah Nyangulu, 2019).