The parameters of Francophone sub-Saharan African literature expanded dramatically during recent years. Twentieth-century African writing was for the most part organized according to the shifting cultural, political, and social circumstances that informed colonial and postcolonial relations. But new transnational constituencies have emerged from immigrant and diasporic networks, and various transnational/transcolonial alignments now offer alternative ways of thinking about Francophone sub-Saharan African literature.

These changes have been reflected in an increasingly ambitious corpus of writing that has provided us with globalization of space (transnational framework), content (environmental issues, human rights, genocide, immigration, child soldiers), genre (fiction, reportage, travel writing, detective fiction), and reception (new audiences, expanded translation and readership, literary awards).