ABSTRACT
Literary treatments of authenticity and identity explored in the context of colonization and decolonization in Africa have been deeply influenced by “The Song of Lawino,” published in 1966 by the Ugandan poet, Okot p’Bitek. In “Jumping Monkey Hill,” a Nigerian writer named Ujunwa is one among a number of writers attending an African Writer’s Workshop outside of Cape Town, South Africa, run by a white British academic named Edward Campbell. In her geographically and culturally expansive memoir, Xiaolu Guo explores many of the same questions taken up in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s story and p’Bitek’s poem. Nine Continents tells the extraordinary story of how, abandoned as a baby and left to grow up with her grandparents in a small fishing village on the Eastern coast of China, she made her way to Beijing to study film, immigrated to Great Britain, learned English, and eventually became a distinguished novelist, poet, and film maker.
