Telling it Slant: Critical Approaches to Helen Oyeyemi

By: Chloe Buckley and Sarah Ilott

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Synopsis: This collection develops a body of research around critically acclaimed author Helen Oyeyemi, putting her in dialogue with other contemporary writers and tracing her relationship with other works and literary traditions. Spanning the settings and cultural traditions of Britain, Nigeria and the Caribbean, her work highlights the interconnected histories and cultures wrought by multiple waves of enslavement, colonization, and migration. This collection describes how Oyeyemi's work engages in an innovative way with Gothic literature, reworking the tropes of a Western Gothic tradition in order to examine the fraught process of establishing identity in a postcolonial context. It demonstrates ways in which Oyeyemi is also a trouble-making feminist voice, employing feminist strategies to rewrite genres, parody literary forms, and critique the characterization of woman in literature. Finally it suggests that Oyeyemi's oeuvre marks a new direction in postcolonial studies as she writes within and about the former colonial centre of Britain, whilst foregrounding enduring colonial legacies that are referenced through the physical and psychological trauma associated with migration, displacement, racism, and contested national identities.