Lexington Books
Pages: 212
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-0742-3 • Hardback • August 2021 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-7936-0744-7 • Paperback • January 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
978-1-7936-0743-0 • eBook • August 2021 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Mahan L. Ellison is associate professor of Spanish at Bridgewater College.
Introduction
Chapter 1: War, Diplomacy, Decolonization, and the Other
Chapter 2: Gender and the Other
Chapter 3: Travel and the Other
Conclusion
Ellison offers a sophisticated reading of Spanish and Hispano-African literature that acknowledges the dynamic and complex processes of mutual othering that characterize hybrid cultural production. His work highlights the multiple ways in which communities on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar struggle to find viable ways to position themselves in an increasingly global cultural field. Ellison's selection of texts and well-researched analysis provides an insightful chronicle of the evolving relations between Spain and Africa during the past seventy years.
— Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo, Oakland University
This groundbreaking study of authors writing Africa and the African Other offers a fresh way to think about Orientalism. Ellison's immensely readable book deftly analyzes the work of nine authors to identify a new and encouraging trend in (the undermining of) Orientalist discourse in contemporary Spanish fiction. Innovative in its focus on Hispano-African literature as well as in terms of its theoretical interventions, this book will be essential reading for scholars of Hispanic studies, postcolonial studies, and African cultural studies.
— Joanna Allan, Northumbria University, Newcastle
This study on works that contest discursively constructed superiority of cultures navigates writings from the different regions of Spain’s colonial presence in Africa with dexterity. The book carefully teases out the nuances and peculiarities that each area contributes to discussions surrounding otherness. It helps readers to reflect more clearly on the heterogeneity of otherness that a recognition and consideration of Hispano-African voices in Peninsular literature makes possible. The study is comprehensive in its scope, lucid in its analyses, and masterful in its handling of diverse writers and the issues they bring up. This is an absolutely important contribution to the growing literature on Peninsular and Hispanophone studies.
— Joanna Boampong, University of Ghana