Malawian Resistance Literature

This book traces the evolution and characteristics of Malawian poetry of resistance, which emerged during the late 1960s and the early 1990s and is distinguished by its expressive modes and concerns. Creative writings during this period reflected new sensibilities and anxieties in the era of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda's dictatorial rule, which resulted in the censorship of writings critical of the government, and the imprisonment of the authors. This study examines the second generation of Malawian poets and nonfiction writers from the 1970s to the present, along with the younger generation of Malawian speculative fiction writers, novelists, artists, and sculptors published between 2000 and 2021, to connect their voices to other generations and wider issues in African literature and art. It covers a number of themes, including exile (life in the west/diaspora), tyranny, prison literature, activism, protest tradition and resistance, orality, intertextuality, Afropolitanism and cosmopolitanism, exile, folklore, childhood, wars, Black Lives Matter, ecocriticism, and disability.