Contemporary Francophone African Plays: An Anthology

Bringing together in English translation eleven Francophone African plays dating from 1970 to 2021, this essential collection includes satirical portraits of colonizers and their collaborators (Bernard Dadi?'s B?atrice du Congo; Sony Labou Tansi's I, Undersigned, Cardiac Case; S?nouvo Agbota Zinsou's We're Just Playing) alongside contemporary works questioning diasporic identity and cultural connections (Koffi Kwahul?'s SAMO: A Tribute to Basquiat and Penda Diouf's Tracks, Trails, and Traces...). The anthology memorializes the Rwandan genocide (Yolande Mukagasana's testimony from Rwanda 94), questions the status of women in entrenched patriarchy (Werewere Liking's Singu? Mura: Given That a Woman...), and follows the life of Elizabeth Nietzsche, who perverted her brother's thought to colonize Paraguay (Jos? Pliya's The Sister of Zarathustra). Gustave Akakpo's The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood and Kossi Efoui's The Conference of the Dogs offer parables about what makes life livable, while Kangni Alem's The Landing shows the dangers of believing in a better life, through migration, outside of Africa.


About the Author
Judith G. Miller is an emerita professor of French at New York University. She has published over thirty translations of plays, essays, and novels, most recently The Théâtre du Soleil, the First Fifty-Five Years by Béatrice Picon-Vallin and And the Whole World Quakes: Chronicle of a Slaughter Foretold, a play by Haitian author Guy Régis Jr., in New Plays from the Caribbean, ed. Stéphanie Bérard.