Nigerian writer and scholar, James Yékú, is publishing his novel, The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture, with Michigan State University Press on May 1st, 2025.

The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture questions what the role of digital media in African culture is, and should be. Through the exploration of literary texts that acknowledge African conflict, Yékú is able to connect African literature to modern cancel culture. Yékú “illustrates how the politics of both conservative and liberal polarization shape what can and cannot be said in online commentaries on African literary forms.”

James Yékú is an Associate Professor of African and African American studies at the University of Kansas. He published Cultural Netizenship: Social Media, Popular Culture, and Performance in Nigeria with Indiana University Press in 2022 and Where The Baedeker Leads: A Poetic Journey with Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd. in 2021.

His poetry collection received an honorable mention for the 2023 African Literature Association Best Book Award for creative writing. Yékú has published some of his other research in Digital Studies / Le champ numérique, African Studies Review, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, and the Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA).

His research is focused on the “exploration of social media in Africa, Nollywood, and online visual culture in Niegeria.” Yékú’s studies have led him to be the recipient of the 2022 Pius Adesanmi Early Career Research Excellence Award from the Canadian Association of African Studies, a 2022 Center for Advanced Internet Studies fellowship in Bochum, and more.

His academic monograph, The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture, combines his research in social media and knowledge of African literature into one response to online debates on cancel culture and decolonization as well as talking about the role of ethnicities in social media.

To read more about The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture‘s release, go to the Michigan State University Press website.

Pre-order The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture here.