"I'm not Afropolitan — I'm of the Continent": A conversation with Yewande Omotoso. (June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fasselt, Rebecca
• Is Part Of: Journal of Commonwealth literature. Volume 50:Number 2(2015:Jun.)
• Page Start: 231
• Page End: 246
• Publication Date: 2015-06
• Subjects: Afropolitanism -- Bom Boy -- diaspora -- migration -- Nigerian literature -- post-apartheid literature -- South African–Nigerian relations -- Yewande Omotoso -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- Taiye Selasi; English literature -- Periodicals; Commonwealth literature (English) -- Periodicals; Littérature anglaise -- Périodiques; 820.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0021989414552922
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0021-9894

Abstract

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become a new home for many immigrants and refugees from all over the African continent. Engaging with this "new season of migration to the South", 1 South African writers are increasingly including migrants from elsewhere on the continent into their casts of protagonists. Moreover, in autobiographies and works of fiction, African migrants themselves have begun to reflect on their experiences of living in South Africa. In this interview, Yewande Omotoso discusses her emigration from Nigeria to South Africa in the early 1990s. She argues that her family's choice to remain on the African continent, rather than emigrating to the UK or the US, as so many contemporary Nigerian writers did, has given her a distinct diasporic experience. As the interview unfolds, she emphasizes that the notion of Afropolitanism does not capture this experience. She also discusses recent developments in contemporary South African publishing and literature, stressing that the country's literary scene, despite its shortcomings, is vibrant, young, and full of creative energy. Omotoso's comments on her debut novel Bom Boy reveal that she is a writer deeply concerned with questions of migration, displacement, and loneliness.