Wole Soyinka in Nigeria, Toni Morrison in the United States, Derek Walcott in the Caribbean, and Bernardine Evaristo in the UK are just a few of the contemporary Black writers who have engaged with Graeco-Roman antiquity in their writing. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah speaks to Justine McConnell, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at King’s College London, about why ancient Greece and Rome hold such a prominent place in 20th- and 21st-century literature by African and African diaspora writers. How do we explore the classical influence on works such as Toni Morrison’s Sula and Bernadine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe without overemphasising it?

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/classics-in-african-diasporic-writing