This collection explores the complexities of black existence, and intellectual and cultural life in the work and legacies of centenarian writers, Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es'kia Mphahlele

Bhekizizwe Peterson, Khwezi Mkhize, Makhosazana Xaba, Jill Bradbury, Hugo Canham, Victoria J Collis-Buthelezi, Simon Gikandi, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Athambile Masola, Innocentia J Mhlambi, Sikhumbuzo Mngadi, Thando Njovane, Obi Nwakanma, James Ogude, Christopher EW Ouma, Stéphane Robolin, Crain Soudien, Tina Steiner, Thuto Thipe, Andrea Thorpe

The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es'kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. All four centenarians lived rich and diverse lives across several continents. In the years following the Second World War they produced more than half a century of foundational creative writing and literary criticism, and made stellar contributions to institutions and repertoires of African and black arts and letters in South Africa and internationally. As a result, their oeuvres present multifaceted engagements and generative insights into a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, culture, identity, class, the language question, tradition, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism, and decolonisation.
The range of the centenarians' imaginations, critical analyses and social interventions spanned disciplinary divides. This volume, in the same spirit, draws on approaches that are equally transdisciplinary. Two aims thread through the contributors' reflections on the complexities of black existence and of intellectual and cultural life in the twentieth century. The first is the exploration of some of the centenarians' key texts and cultural projects that shaped their legacies. In doing so, the volume contributors trace a number of divergent intellectual and aesthetic lineages in their works and organisational activities. The second aim is a consideration of the ways in which these foundational writers' legacies continue to resonate today, confirming their status as crucial contributors to modern African and diasporic black arts and letters.

List of illustrations
Foreword - Simon Gikandi
Acknowledgements
Tribute to Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson - Jill Bradbury, Khwezi Mkhize and Makhosazana Xaba

Introduction - Bhekizizwe Peterson, Khwezi Mkhize and Makhosazana Xaba

Part I: Remapping and Rereading African Literature and Cultural Production
Chapter 1 Foundational Writers and the Making of African Literary Genealogy: Es'kia Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams - James Ogude
Chapter 2 Foundational African Literary Discourse and Dimensions of Authority - Obi Nwakanma
Chapter 3 Situating Sibusiso Nyembezi in African Literary History - Sikhumbuzo Mngadi
Chapter 4 A Footnote and a Pioneer: Noni Jabavu's Legacy - Athambile Masola
Chapter 5 'Navigations of Tyranny': Reconsidering Es'kia Mphahlele's Writing - Crain Soudien
Chapter 6 Noni Jabavu and the Sensibilities of Early Black Educated Elites - Hugo Canham

Part II: South Africa and Fugitive Imaginaries
Chapter 7 (Un)Homing and the Uncanny: The (Auto)Biographical Es'kia Mphahlele - Thando Njovane
Chapter 8 In the Shadows of the British Empire: Nyembezi's Inkinsela YaseMngungundlovu - Innocentia J. Mhlambi
Chapter 9 Escaping Apartheid: Race, Education and Cultural Exchange, 1955-2003 - Anne-Maria Makhulu
Chapter 10 Photographing Home Life in Alexandra between the 1930s and the 1970s - Thuto Thipe
11 Down Avenues of (Un)Learning: Reading, Writing and Being - Jill Bradbury

Part III: In the Eye of the Short Century: Diaspora and pan-Africanism Reconsidered
Chapter 12 Es'kia Mphahlele and the Question of the Aesthetic - Khwezi Mkhize
Chapter 13 'African Contrasts': Noni Jabavu's Travelogue as Kaleidoscope - Tina Steiner
Chapter 14 Es'kia Mphahlele, Chemchemi and Pan-African Literary Publics - Christopher E.W. Ouma
Chapter 15 The 'Crossroads and Forkways' of Pan-Africanism between 1948 and 1968 - Bhekizizwe Peterson
Chapter 16 'She Certainly Couldn't Be Conventional If She Tried': Noni Jabavu, the Editor of The New Strand Magazine in London - Makhosazana Xaba
Chapter 17 Anti-Colonial Romance and Tragedy in Peter Abrahams' A Wreath for Udomo - Andrea Thorpe
18 Mphahlele's Writing in the Whirlwind - Stéphane Robolin
Chapter 19 From South Africa to Coyaba: Peter Abrahams' (New) World Geographies - Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi

Contributors
Index