Release Date: July 16, 2014
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Engaging important discussions about social conflict, environmental change, and imperialism in Africa, Different Shades of Green points to legacies of African environmental writing, often neglected as a result of critical perspectives shaped by dominant Western conceptions of nature and environmentalism. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework employing postcolonial studies, political ecology, environmental history, and writing by African environmental activists, Byron Caminero-Santangelo emphasizes connections within African environmental literature, highlighting how African writers have challenged unjust, ecologically destructive forms of imperial development and resource extraction.
Different Shades of Green also brings into dialogue a wide range of African creative writing—including works by Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda, Nuruddin Farah, Wangari Maathai, and Ken Saro-Wiwa—in order to explore vexing questions for those involved in the struggle for environmental justice, in the study of political ecology, and in the environmental humanities, urging continued imaginative thinking in effecting a more equitable, sustain¬able future in Africa.
Byron Caminero-Santangelo teaches English at the University of Kansas. He is co-editor (with Garth Myers) of Environment at the Margins: Literary and Environmental Studies in Africa (2011) and author of African Fiction And Joseph Conrad: Reading Postcolonial Intertextuality (2004).
In these entries, Professor Achebe’s generous spirit shines like a guiding spirit: warm, urging, steadying. This is a tribute to a well-respected teacher, colleague and friend. Here, members of the African Literature Association confirm how Professor Achebe’s life and works inspired and encouraged them personally and professionally to look for and find a new way for Africa and Africans. About Achebe’s enduring influence in African literature, Bernth Lindfors says, “Achebe’s stories have been our escort for more than half a century, and they will continue to guide us to a better understanding of African realities, past and present, in the years to come,” Hilary Chala Kowino, who would like to continue reading Things Fall Apart beyond the grave, requests that a copy of the book be placed in his casket when he dies. We the editors cannot say more than that!