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. 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. She is also a trouble-making feminist voice, employing feminist strategies to rewrite genres, parody literary
forms, and critique the characterization of ?woman’ in literature. Oyeyemi’s oeuvre marks a new direction in postcolonial studies: The binarising model of writing back famously advocated in
Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin’s seminal study ? The Empire Writes Back (1989) ? does not hold for her work. Neither does Oyeyemi’s work celebrate the utopian potential of what Homi Bhabha
terms ?Third Spaces’ in multicultural societies. Instead, Oyeyemi foregrounds enduring colonial legacies referenced through the physical and psychological trauma associated with migration,
displacement, racism and contested national identities. This collection brings together a range of intersecting critical approaches in a timely investigation of Oyeyemi’s literary output.
