‘Africa awaits its creators’: Subverting Development Narratives

This chapter argues that GraceLand by Chris Abani—deliberately chosen due to its status as a much-discussed novel in postcolonial and African literary studies—resists ideas about linear social ‘progress’ through its disruptive bildungsroman narrative and the communal solidarity offered by the popular music featured throughout the novel. Resisting external assumptions about the linearity of narrative form and social ‘progress’, GraceLand uses its destabilised narrative of development and melodramatic excess to confront some of the tired clichés of the ‘tragic continent’. Rather than reinforcing problematic assumptions of Africa, I argue that GraceLand presents a utopian framework of solidarity and resistance in a neoliberal world: far from pessimistic, GraceLand does not offer expectations or answers about what needs to change in order to create a more equitable society for the increasing global population of the urban poor. GraceLand is read here as a novel of utopian thought, provoking interrogation into what’s missing from society that prevents the emergence of a better world.