New Books in African Studies

The African cities of Bata and Al-Hoceima were created during the Spanish colonial rule of Equatorial Guinea and Morocco. Spain’s African Colonial Legacies: Morocco and Equatorial Guinea Compared (Brill, 2022) constructs their local history to analyse how Spanish colonialism worked, what its legacies were and the imprints it left on their national histories. The work explains the revision of collective memories of the past in the present as a form of decolonisation that seeks to build different foundations for the future in a transnational and glocal framework. The result is an exciting puzzle of individual and collective memories in which Africans contest their colonial cultural heritage and shape their identities at a global level. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine’s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today. Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism. The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (FSG, 2024) offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future. The Black Utopians is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History.  Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the world’s rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity. Taking readers on a captivating journey of discovery, Lorna Gibb explores the histories of languages under threat or already extinct as well as those in resurgence, shedding light on their origins, development, and distinctive voices. She travels the globe—from Australia and Finland to India, the Canary Islands, Namibia, Scotland, and Paraguay—showing how these languages are not mere words and syntax but keepers of diverse worldviews, sites of ethnic conflict, and a means for finding surprising commonalities. Readers learn the basics of how various language systems work—with vowels and consonants, whistles and clicks, tonal inflections, or hand signs—and how this kaleidoscope of self-expression carries vital information about our planet, indigenous cultures and tradition, and the history and evolution of humankind. Rare Tongues is essential reading for anyone concerned about the preservation of endangered languages and an eloquent and disarmingly personal meditation on why the world’s linguistic heritage is so fundamental to our shared experience—and why its loss should worry us all.Lorna Gibb is associate professor of creative writing and linguistics at the University of Stirling.Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights.Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, Dr. Paynter draws together testimonials from ethnographic research—alongside literature, film, and visual art—to interrogate the colonial, racial logics that inform emergency responses to migration. She also examines the media, discourses, policies, and practices that shape lived experiences of migration well beyond international borders. Centering the witnessing of Black Africans in Italy, Emergency in Transit reveals how this emergency apparatus operates and posits a vision of mobility that refutes the notions of crisis so often imposed on those who cross the Mediterranean Sea.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa’s Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation.Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Ohio UP, 2017), Bianca Murillo explores the shifting social terrains that made the buying and selling of goods in modern Ghana possible. Fusing economic and business history with social and cultural history, she traces the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and independent Ghana from the late nineteenth century through to the political turmoil of the 1970s.Murillo brings sales clerks, market women, and everyday consumers in Ghana to the center of a story that is all too often told in sweeping metanarratives about what happens when African businesses are incorporated into global markets. By emphasizing the centrality of human relationships to Ghana’s economic past, Murillo introduces a radical rethinking of consumption studies from an Africa-centered perspective. The result is a keen look at colonial capitalism in all of its intricacies, legacies, and contradictions, including its entanglement with gender and race.Bianca Murillo is a professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is a historian of modern Africa, with research and teaching interests in global economies, decolonization, and race and gender studies. While her work focuses on twentieth-century Ghana, her research on international business and capitalism is comparative and transnational. Dr. Murillo has published articles in the journals Gender & History, Enterprise & Society, and Africa. Her current book project, Financing Africa’s Future, is a history of debt, foreign investment, and fraud in Ghana’s post-independence era. Recent writings featuring this research appear in Africa is a Country and History Workshop.Murillo's research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute of Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), Fulbright-Hays Program, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Program (U.S. Department of Education). She is an elected board member of the Business History Conference (Association) and has served as an elected committee member and committee chair for the American Historical Association.You can learn more about her work hereAfua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana.Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word.Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter.150,000,000 million lifetime downloads. Advertise on the New Books Network. Watch our promotional video.Learn how to make the most of our library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. From abducted girls to brash soldiers, and from community leaders to simple fishermen, this collection provides an insight into the realities of those living through the conflict, making this an essential cultural archive. The World Was in Our Hands covers themes of patriarchy, the economy, climate change, and corruption, to paint a picture that is much broader than what has been captured through news coverage. Out April 22!Chitra Nagarajan is an activist, researcher and writer. She has spent the last 15 years working to analyse conflict, build peace, and promote and protect human rights, particularly in West Africa, and is involved in feminist, anti-racist, anti-fundamentalist and queer movements. She focuses on anti rights movements, civilian protection, climate, economic, gender, and racial justice, conflict analysis and sensitivity, and social inclusion. She is also the co-editor of She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak.Visit her website to learn more about her and her research, and for more information about upcoming publicity events for The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict.Jessie Cohen is an editor at the New Books Network. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Through fieldwork in one of the “China malls” that has emerged along Johannesburg’s former mining belt, Huang identifies everyday relations of power and difference between Chinese entrepreneurs and African migrant workers in these wholesale shops. These relations, Huang contends, replicate and perpetuate global structures of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, capitalism, and colonialism, even when whiteness is not present. Huang argues that this dynamic reflects the sedimented legacies and continued operation of white supremacy and colonialism, which have been transformed in the shift of capitalism’s center of gravity toward China and the Global South. These new forms of racial capitalism and empire layer onto and extend histories of exploitation and racialization in South Africa. Taking a palimpsestic approach, Huang offers tools for understanding this shift and decentering contemporary Western conceptions of race, empire, and racial capitalism in the Chinese Century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Freshly out from under French colonial rule in 1960, the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin) became home to the largest number of coups d’état in history, earning the reputation of the “sick child of Africa.” Country politics eventually aligned with Marxist and socialist ideologies stimulating French opposition that resulted in mercenary intervention. Opération Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State (Lexington Books, 2024) brings together the voices of the involved mercenaries, political rulers, and local witnesses to reveal a struggle for power in the former French colony. Opération Crevette was a mercenary operation which was intended to remove Benin’s eleventh president from power in the 1970s. This book analyzes the political, social, and economic factors that led to this operation, as well as the foreign interference from nations like France and America. Les and Monique Sosnowski provide a unique perspective of international politics, exposing French instigated military intervention and the immense influence Western nations have played in shaping the Africa we know today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literature grapples with the enforced optimism of US empire that circulates in postcolonial nations: Unsettles chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national development across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Brings together African literary studies, affect studies, and U.S. empire studies Diagnoses and critiques how U.S. empire is sustained through cycles of optimism and disappointment Includes chapters on both classic postcolonial fiction by writers such as Buchi Emecheta and Miriam Tlali and recent anglophone African novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ekow Duker Postcolonialism has long been associated with post-nationalism. Yet, the persistence of nation-oriented literatures from within the African postcolony and its diasporas registers how dreams of national becoming endure. In this fascinating new study, Hallemeier brings together African literary studies, affect studies and US empire studies, to challenge chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national development across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Nigerian and South African writings in African Literature and US Empire, while often attuned to the trans- and extra- national, repeatedly scrutinize why visions of national exceptionalism, signified by a ‘pan-African’ Nigeria and ‘new’ South Africa, remain stubbornly affecting, despite decades of disillusionment with national governments beholden to a neocolonial global order. In these fictions, optimistic forms of nationalism cannot be reduced to easily critiqued state-sanctioned discourses of renewal and development. They are also circulated through experiences of embodied need, quotidian aspiration and transnational, pan-African relationship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies