Before outlining its history, I should explain what I mean by “vernacular literature”. What the writers included here have in common is their choice of composing in linguistic codes that are primarily spoken rather than written, and also ones that have generally been perceived as having a lower status than Standard English. Those primarily spoken languages have as many labels as variants: among others, nonstandard, dialect, demotic, slang, pidgin, creole, and patois. Such designations are slippery and politically loaded: “vernacular”, for example, originally referred to the language of a house slave, but sounds to the modern ear more neutral than the often derogatory “dialect”. I prefer “vernacular” for the wonderful way in which it exemplifies the duality of the phenomenon it describes: from an openly debased slave language to a mode associated with avant-garde experimentation and literary prowess. Other writers use different terms. Kamau Brathwaite, the West Indian poet represented here in the poetry and essay sections, coined “nation language” to replace “dialect”. If dialect is the language spoken by caricatures, Brathwaite writes, nation language is “an English which is like a howl, or a shout or a machine-gun or the wind or a wave”.

As for as what to call it, my own favourite formulation comes from the martyred Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose compelling and heartbreaking Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English provides the title of this collection. In his introductory note, Saro-Wiwa tells us of his goal to create a hybrid language that “throbs vibrantly enough and communicates effectively”; Sozaboy far surpasses those criteria.

All of the writers in this volume compose in languages that challenge the hierarchy implied by “dialect” versus “language” or “standard” versus “nonstandard”, insisting that the codes they practise be recognised for their strength, coherence, and communicative capacity.

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