100 books like Postcolonial Modernism

By Chika Okeke-Agulu,

Here are 100 books that Postcolonial Modernism fans have personally recommended if you like Postcolonial Modernism. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade

David Joselit Author Of Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been professionally involved with contemporary art since the 1980s, when I was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In the forty years since I've seen an enormous shift in the orientation of American curators and scholars from Western art to a global perspective. After earning my PhD at Harvard, and writing several books on contemporary art, I wanted to tackle the challenge of a truly comparative contemporary art history. To do so, I've depended on the burgeoning scholarship from a new more diverse generation of art historians, as well as on many decades of travel and research. My book Heritage and Debt is an attempt to synthesize that knowledge. 

David's book list on art and globalization

David Joselit Why did David love this book?

This engaging book looks at globalization and art from a perspective well beyond the conventional art world. Wong analyzes the work of artists in the Chinese "urban village" of Dafen where some five million paintings are produced a year–copies of Western masterpieces. Rather than viewing this industry condescendingly, Wong takes Dafen as a laboratory for understanding what qualities make an artist, and how creativity exists even in contexts of reproduction and replication. 

By Winnie Won Yin Wong,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Van Gogh on Demand as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the Guangdong province in southeastern China lies Dafen, a village that houses thousands of workers who paint Van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about life and work in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, investigating the claims of conceptual artists who made projects there; working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying merchants in Europe, Asia, and America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art show for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about…


Book cover of Making Art Global: The Third Havana Biennial 1989, Exhibition Histories Vol. 2

David Joselit Author Of Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been professionally involved with contemporary art since the 1980s, when I was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In the forty years since I've seen an enormous shift in the orientation of American curators and scholars from Western art to a global perspective. After earning my PhD at Harvard, and writing several books on contemporary art, I wanted to tackle the challenge of a truly comparative contemporary art history. To do so, I've depended on the burgeoning scholarship from a new more diverse generation of art historians, as well as on many decades of travel and research. My book Heritage and Debt is an attempt to synthesize that knowledge. 

David's book list on art and globalization

David Joselit Why did David love this book?

This book is part of a series that extensively documents watershed modern and contemporary exhibitions. The Havana Biennial of 1989 was especially important because it developed what has been called South-South connections in the exhibition of contemporary artin other words, connections between different parts of the Global South or non-West that are not routed through European or North American art capitals. This was possible because, during the Cold War, Cuba maintained extensive cultural networks throughout the so-called Third World

By Rachel Weiss, Luis Camnitzer, Coco Fusco , Geeta Kapur , Charles Esche

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Making Art Global as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The second installment in Afterall's Exhibition Histories series, Making Art Global, Part 1 focuses on the third Havana Biennial, which took place in 1989. In the core essay, Rachel Weiss examines the ways in which this exhibition extended the global territory of contemporary art and redefined the biennial model. Gerardo Mosquera, a key member of the curatorial team, contributes a reflection on the project, and its constituent exhibitions and events are documented photographically. The book also includes a paper delivered by Geeta Kapur at the Biennial conference and republishes reviews of the Biennial by Coco Fusco and Luis Camnitzer. It…


Book cover of Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War

David Joselit Author Of Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been professionally involved with contemporary art since the 1980s, when I was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In the forty years since I've seen an enormous shift in the orientation of American curators and scholars from Western art to a global perspective. After earning my PhD at Harvard, and writing several books on contemporary art, I wanted to tackle the challenge of a truly comparative contemporary art history. To do so, I've depended on the burgeoning scholarship from a new more diverse generation of art historians, as well as on many decades of travel and research. My book Heritage and Debt is an attempt to synthesize that knowledge. 

David's book list on art and globalization

David Joselit Why did David love this book?

Hito Steyerl is one of the most prominent artists and media theorists in the world. Her essays draw unexpected and always stimulating connections between media technologies, surveillance, war, and political power. They are short, concise, and a pleasure to read, but they always engage with big ideas around the ethical and social challenges of a world made global through the framework of the Internet and digital communication more broadly.

By Hito Steyerl,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Duty Free Art as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as a fictional currency in a global futures market that has nothing to do with the work itself? Can we distinguish between creativity and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring artefacts as diverse as video games, Wikileaks files, the proliferation of spam, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture,…


Book cover of Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method

David Joselit Author Of Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been professionally involved with contemporary art since the 1980s, when I was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In the forty years since I've seen an enormous shift in the orientation of American curators and scholars from Western art to a global perspective. After earning my PhD at Harvard, and writing several books on contemporary art, I wanted to tackle the challenge of a truly comparative contemporary art history. To do so, I've depended on the burgeoning scholarship from a new more diverse generation of art historians, as well as on many decades of travel and research. My book Heritage and Debt is an attempt to synthesize that knowledge. 

David's book list on art and globalization

David Joselit Why did David love this book?

Not only is this book an authoritative account of the Tansaekhwa movement in Koreaa group of abstract painters who gained great acclaim in recent yearsbut it establishes a model of how regional art worlds intersect with global networks. Kee accomplishes this by charting the hierarchical relation between Japan and Korea within Southeast Asia, whose differences were largely erased when "Asian" art was exhibited in Europe. In other words, regional rivalries and specificities are often subsumed into broader regional identities when artworks begin to circulate globally.

By Joan Kee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Contemporary Korean Art as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


Starting in the mid-1960s, a group of Korean artists began to push paint, soak canvas, drag pencils, rip paper, and otherwise manipulate the materials of painting in ways that prompted critics to describe their actions as "methods" rather than artworks. A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa (monochromatic painting) also became one of its most famous and successful. Promoted in Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, Tansaekhwa grew to be the international face of contemporary Korean art and a cornerstone of contemporary Asian art.


In this full-color, richly illustrated account-the first of its kind in English-Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation…


Book cover of The Fishermen

Feyisayo Anjorin Author Of Kasali's Africa

From my list on African post-colonial life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born in Akure, a hilly, ancient, rainforest town that became the chief administrative town of the newly created Ondo State in 1976. As a child, I witnessed the old town’s effort, both deliberate and inevitable, to wear a modern look. I’m naturally attracted to stories, fiction or non-fiction, that gives voice to the individual right to resist the old or the new; resistance that will not be without consequences. Kasali’s Africa is the theatre of ideas for Kasali, a rural farmer courted by the educated elites, and his view on what Africa should be. If you love Africa, I know you will enjoy these books.

Feyisayo's book list on African post-colonial life

Feyisayo Anjorin Why did Feyisayo love this book?

The Fishermen is set in Akure, the first town I ever knew intimately, and a town I have fallen in love with once again as an adult. In Akure you will see hills and rivers and green scenery, you will see stories. This gives me rare insight into the childhood adventures of the protagonist, Ben, and his 3 brothers, whose lives were shackled by the rantings of a mentally disturbed man. I love the author’s use of historical figures and events of 1990s Nigeria as a backdrop for this tragic story about a normal Nigerian family.

By Chigozie Obioma,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Fishermen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A striking debut novel about an unforgettable childhood, by a Nigerian writer the New York Times has crowned "the heir to Chinua Achebe."

Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by…


Book cover of The Slave Girl

Portia Owusu Author Of Spectres from the Past: Slavery and the Politics of "History" in West African and African-American Literature

From my list on the African experience of slavery and its afterlives.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a scholar of African and African American literature with interests in the cultures, histories, and philosophies of Africa and the diaspora. Currently, I teach and research at Texas A&M University. The history of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies are huge components of my current research; it is also the topic of my doctoral research which I completed in 2017 at The School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS), The University of London. 

Portia's book list on the African experience of slavery and its afterlives

Portia Owusu Why did Portia love this book?

The transatlantic slave trade was, historically, the most organized and sophisticated system of dependence, but it was not the only form of enslavement. In Africa, prior to it, and even proceeding it, were systems of bondage. This is the heart of Emecheta’s novel: set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of a young Igbo woman who loses her parents and is then sold into slavery. As characteristic of Emecheta, it is beautifully written and developed in characterization. Specifically, what I love about this novel is its perspective on the African female in situations that are physical, psychological, and cultural enslavement. 

By Buchi Emecheta,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Slave Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Her graphically detailed pictures of tribal life make the novel memorable."―Chicago Tribune

The Slave Girl follows the fortunes of Ogbanje Ojebeta, a Nigerian woman who is sold into slavery in her own land after disease and tragedy leave her orphaned as a child. In her fellow slaves, she finds a surrogate family that clings together under the unbending will of their master. As Ogbanje Ojebeta becomes a woman and discovers her need for home and family, and for freedom and identity, she realizes that she must ultimately choose her own destiny.

Book cover of The Invention Of Women: Making An African Sense Of Western Gender Discourses

Romina Istratii Author Of Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia

From my list on gender, religion, and domestic violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Moldovan emigrant growing up in Greece, I believed that Western institutions were centers of excellent knowledge. After studying in the USA and the UK and conducting research with Muslim and Christian communities in Africa, I became aware of colonial, ethnocentric, and universalizing tendencies in gender, religion, and domestic violence studies and their application in non-western contexts. International development had historically followed a secular paradigm congruent with Western societies’ perception of religion and its role in society. My work has since sought to bridge religious beliefs with gender analysis in international development work so that the design of gender-sensitive interventions might respond better to domestic violence in traditional religious societies.

Romina's book list on gender, religion, and domestic violence

Romina Istratii Why did Romina love this book?

Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí’s was the first book I encountered when I started to critically engage with Western feminist scholarship as a Master's student in the UK.

This book made a major intervention by challenging theories of gender in Western social sciences and questioning their relevance to African societies. I especially loved the book because Oyěwùmí offered a detailed presentation of gender realities in the Oyo-Yorùbá society of Nigeria that paid attention to human relations holistically and situationally and did not assume gender inequality on the basis of female/male bodies.

A must-read analysis for anyone working to decolonize gender theory.

By Oyeronke Oyewumi,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Invention Of Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures.
Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.


Book cover of The Girl with the Louding Voice

Daisy Buchanan Author Of Pity Party

From my list on break your heart, then put it back together again.

Why am I passionate about this?

I believe that books have saved my life. When I was a child, I was often depressed and anxious, and I instinctively found refuge in reading. I sought books acknowledging that the world can be a painful and difficult place but showed that it was also filled with happiness, love, and joy as long as you knew where to look. My passion for reading has stayed with me, I host the You’re Booked podcast where I talk to iconic authors about the books that have brought them comfort and joy. And whenever I feel anxious, I still reach for a book–because reading heals my heart. 

Daisy's book list on break your heart, then put it back together again

Daisy Buchanan Why did Daisy love this book?

I think Adunni might be one of my favorite heroines of all time. She’s so brave, loveable, and vulnerable. This book opened my eyes to what it’s like to live in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable, but it made me so hopeful, too. Adunni’s rebel spirit propelled me through the pages.

In a way, this book made me feel ten years old again–when I was reading, it was as though nothing beyond the book existed. Every time Adunni triumphed, I wanted to stand up and cheer. Most of all, it made me feel I could do my bit to change the world. I know that there are real children facing forced marriage, like Adunni. This book made me want to raise my voice and help.

By Abi Daré,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Girl with the Louding Voice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The most uplifting debut of 2020

'Unforgettable' New York Times 'Impressive' Observer 'Remarkable' Independent 'Important' Guardian 'Captivating' Mirror 'Luminous' Daily Mail 'Sparkling' Harper's Bazaar 'Beautiful' Herald

THE NEW YORK TIMES AND TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR FICTION
___________________________________________________

I don't just want to be having any kind voice . . .
I want a louding voice.

At fourteen, Adunni dreams of getting an education and giving her family a more comfortable home in her small Nigerian village. Instead, Adunni's father sells her off to become the third wife of an old man. When tragedy…


Book cover of War Girls

Lauren Yero Author Of Under This Forgetful Sky

From my list on seeking hope after the end of the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Can stories bring a human scale to something as all-encompassing as climate change? In 2011, I began an MA in Literature and Environment with this question weighing on my mind. I finished my degree two years later with a draft of my debut novel, Under This Forgetful Sky. I’ve come to understand the climate crisis, in many ways, as a crisis of imagination. Its enormity tests the limits of the imaginable. What if the world as we know it ends? What would life look like on the other side? The books on this list reckon with the fears these questions bring while also gesturing beautifully, unsentimentally, courageously toward hope. 

Lauren's book list on seeking hope after the end of the world

Lauren Yero Why did Lauren love this book?

War Girls is YA sci-fi that takes place in war-torn Nigeria at the end of the 22nd century.

The world as we know it has ended because of runaway climate change and nuclear disaster, and two sisters, Onyii and Ify, live together in a makeshift colony of traumatized former child soldiers. After a devastating raid on their camp, the sisters are separated—each believing the other was killed—only to find themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.

This is a book about the world-shattering horrors of war, but it’s also about colonial violence, about sisterhood and solidarity, and about small moments that forever shape how the protagonists view each other and themselves. It’s also a complex, character-driven story that tenaciously searches for hope in ruins and aftermaths.

By Tochi Onyebuchi,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked War Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Two sisters are torn apart by war and must fight their way back to each other in a futuristic, Black Panther-inspired Nigeria. The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky.

In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life.

Two sisters, Onyii and…


Book cover of Akata Witch

Shelly X. Leonn Author Of The Ghost and the Wolf

From my list on girl MCs who are owning life.

Why am I passionate about this?

My novel choices were part of the Afterschool Literacy & Building Modules for an organization called LitShop. It encourages growth in literacy, making, building, and leadership in girls ages 10-15 in St. Louis, Missouri. I’m honored to lead the writing classes. All of the LitShop books feature strong girls who believe they can make and build their way to a better world, and I aim to include similar characters in my stories. Stories can provide us with motivation, inspiration, and companionship, and all of these books have done just that… for the girls of LitShop as well as myself.

Shelly's book list on girl MCs who are owning life

Shelly X. Leonn Why did Shelly love this book?

A misfit loner is chosen to save the world. I know, it’s been done before. But this story is special. Firstly, it is set against the backdrop of Nigerian culture and lore. And secondly, Sunny. The main character is memorable for more than just her “differences.” She is determined and fierce, making her a hero you want to see bring home a “w” over and over again.

By Nnedi Okorafor,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Akata Witch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Affectionately dubbed "the Nigerian Harry Potter," Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magic, mystery, and finding one's place in the world.

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing-she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Nigeria, decolonization, and postcolonialism?

Nigeria 67 books
Decolonization 16 books
Postcolonialism 24 books