African Writing and Text

African Writing and Text PDF Author: Simon P. X. Battestini
Publisher: New York ; Ottawa : Legas
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description

African Writing and Text

African Writing and Text PDF Author: Simon P. X. Battestini
Publisher: New York ; Ottawa : Legas
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description


How to Write About Africa

How to Write About Africa PDF Author: Binyavanga Wainaina
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0812989678
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
From one of Africa’s most influential and eloquent essayists, a posthumous collection that highlights his biting satire and subversive wisdom on topics from travel to cultural identity to sexuality “A fierce literary talent . . . [Wainaina] shines a light on his continent without cliché.”—The Guardian “Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. . . . Africa is to be pitied, worshipped, or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.” Binyavanga Wainaina was a pioneering voice in African literature, an award-winning memoirist and essayist remembered as one of the greatest chroniclers of contemporary African life. This groundbreaking collection brings together, for the first time, Wainaina’s pioneering writing on the African continent, including many of his most critically acclaimed pieces, such as the viral satirical sensation “How to Write About Africa.” Working fearlessly across a range of topics—from politics to international aid, cultural heritage, and redefined sexuality—he describes the modern world with sensual, emotional, and psychological detail, giving us a full-color view of his home country and continent. These works present the portrait of a giant in African literature who left a tremendous legacy.

The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros

The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros PDF Author: Galawdewos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691164215
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
A "geadl" or hagiography, originally written by Gealawdewos thirty years after the subject's death, in 1672-1673. Translated from multiple manuscripts and versions.

The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945

The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945 PDF Author: Gareth Cornwell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231130465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.

African Literature and the Future

African Literature and the Future PDF Author: Adeoti, Gbemisola
Publisher: CODESRIA
ISBN: 2869786336
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Many African countries achieved independence from their colonisers over five decades ago, but the people and the continent largely remain mere spectators in the arena of their own dance. The post-independence states are supposed to be sovereign, but the levers of economic and political powers still reside in the donor states. Not in many fora is the complex reality that defines Africa more trenchantly articulated than in imaginative literature produced about and on the continent. This is the crux of the essays collected in African Literature and the Future. The book reflects on Africa's past and present, addressing anxieties about the future through the epistemological lens of literature. The contributors peep ahead from a backward glance. They dissect the trend and tenor of politics and their impact on the socio-cultural and economic development of the continent as portrayed in imaginative writings over the years. One salient feature of African literature is the close affinity between art and politics in its polemics. This is well established in all the six essays in the book as the authors stress the interconnections between literature and society in their textual analyses. On the whole, there is an overwhelming feeling of angst and pessimism, but the authors perceive a glimmer of hope despite daunting odds, under different conditions. Thus, they depict the plausible fate of Africa in the twenty-first century, as informed by its ancient and recent past, gleaned from primary texts.

African Literature in the Digital Age

African Literature in the Digital Age PDF Author: Shola Adenekan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847012388
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first book-length study on the relationship between African literature and new media.

The Rise of the African Novel

The Rise of the African Novel PDF Author: Mukoma Wa Ngugi
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047205368X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Engaging questions of language, identity, and reception to restore South African and diaspora writing to the African literary tradition

Honey from the Lion

Honey from the Lion PDF Author: Wendy Laura Belcher
Publisher: Dutton Adult
ISBN: 9780525245964
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description


Africa Writes Back to Self

Africa Writes Back to Self PDF Author: Evan M. Mwangi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438426976
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

Singular Performances

Singular Performances PDF Author: Michael Syrotinski
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813921457
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Francophone African writing is often concerned with questions of subjectivity and narrative agency, and it is this focus Michael Syrotinski takes as his point of departure in Singular Performances. Using the work of V. Y. Mudimbe as a major theoretical reference, Syrotinski sets up a number of original dialogues between francophone African literature, African philosophy, literary theory, postcolonial studies, cinema, cultural studies, and history to arrive at the notion of a "performative reinscription of subjectivity." Singular Performances covers a wide range of francophone African writers, each of whom is read within a broader theoretical context related to African subjectivity: Mudimbe and the philosophical subject, Aoua Kéita and autobiography, Bernard Dadié and ethnographic irony, Ousmane Sembene and Tierno Monénembo and the cinematic imagination, Véronique Tadjo and Werewere Liking and the female writing subject, and Sony Labou Tansi and the "spectral" subject. In this skillful interdisciplinary weaving together of contemporary theory and literature, the focus on the francophone African subject allows for a richer appreciation of the texture and rhetoric of the language of the texts themselves. What emerges from this study is the subject understood not as a single homogenized entity but as a plural celebration of singular francophone African subjectivities.