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Author: Sembène Ousmane
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1837930473
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
It is 1947 and the workers on the Dakar-Niger Railway have come out on strike. Sembène Ousmane, in this vivid and moving novel, evokes all of the colour, passion and tragedy of those decisive years in history. 'Ever since they left Thiès, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending.' God's Bits of Wood is Sembène Ousmane's internationally renowned novel, based on his own experiences of the landmark 1947 railroad strike that spread across French West Africa. 'A classic.' Guardian 'Ousmane Sembène [was] a crucial figure in Africa's postcolonial cultural awakening.' New York Times 'A powerful story.' Kirkus Translated from the French by Francis Price.
Author: Sembène Ousmane
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1837930473
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Get Book Here
Book Description
It is 1947 and the workers on the Dakar-Niger Railway have come out on strike. Sembène Ousmane, in this vivid and moving novel, evokes all of the colour, passion and tragedy of those decisive years in history. 'Ever since they left Thiès, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending.' God's Bits of Wood is Sembène Ousmane's internationally renowned novel, based on his own experiences of the landmark 1947 railroad strike that spread across French West Africa. 'A classic.' Guardian 'Ousmane Sembène [was] a crucial figure in Africa's postcolonial cultural awakening.' New York Times 'A powerful story.' Kirkus Translated from the French by Francis Price.
Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: Heinemann
ISBN: 9780435909598
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
"God's Bits of Wood is a fictionalized account of the Dakar-Niger train strikes which took in the 1940s. The novel looks at both the political and personal sacrifices the strikers and their families made. The political power is portrayed here as the strikers try to win back pensions, annual paid vacations, and family allowances from the Europeans. The novel can be seen as a shift of power between the African strikers and their European bosses. The Europeans have the political process and violence as a leverage of power, which they use both insistently and mindlessly. One of the European delegates for the railway company accidentally shoots young boys who are playing along the tracks. The delegate isn't charged with their murders. The Europeans also prevent the strikers and their families from having access to water. Yet the strikers also have the masses as their power. The strikers gain powerful allies in their own women. In the beginning of the novel, the women are not told the details of the strike, though they are asked to support their men. Only the small child, Ad'jibid'ji, shows any interest and insists that her grandfather take her to a meeting of the strikers. Yet as the novel continues, the women become more and more involved in the strike. This is because the strike has hit home to them in a literal way. There is no water nor food to eat. The women and children begin to starve. The women suffer in silence until they begin to fight back. Two of the more striking sequences in the novel are the siege between the women of N'Diayene and the policemen who have come to arrest Ramatoulaye, and leads to the burning down of the village, and the march the women go on to Dakar to protest their treatment and to support the strikers. The strike breaks down the barriers which cause inequality between men and women, black and white." -- from www.associatedcontent.com (Oct. 22, 2010).
Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: Heinemann International Incorporated
ISBN: 9780435901752
Category : African fiction (English)
Languages : en
Pages : 114
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Book Description
Looks at how the new African middle class have taken over from the colonialists as the exploiters of the people.
Author: Ousmane Sembène
Publisher: New Africa Books
ISBN: 9780864861221
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Author: Shimmer Chinodya
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1779223528
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
Dew in the Morning was written when the author, Shimmer Chinodya, was eighteen. The intensity of childhood memory is sharp and immediate. Godi, the young boy whose life we experience as he grows up, perceives more than he understands. The ambivalence or instability of the text lies at the juncture between the felt experience of the child, and the rational, interpretative, analysis of the adult. A Bildungsroman, Chinodya captures the centrality of land in the national consciousness: its beauty, its rhythms, its seasons and its fertility. But he does not romanticise the hardships: the droughts, poor harvests, over-crowding particularly as a result of the inflow of resettled people and the tensions over land and between peoples as they struggle to survive. Good humour, strict morality, hard work, and mutual support can be undermined by corrupt practice, or tainted by traditional ceremonies that are as frightening as they are powerful, and raise essential questions of belief and validity. Dew in the Morning, is a tender, evocative novel of growing up, but in it we see the seeds of many issues which Chinodya will dwell on in his later novels: familial tensions, the taut interplay of tradition and modernity, ancestral beliefs and Christianity.
Author: Lifongo J. Vetinde
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739192558
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Undoubtedly one of Africa’s most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene's creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene's oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene’s relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene’s fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation. The contributors critically reassess the ideological underpinnings of Sembene’s thoughts, his role as one of the foundational pillars of African cultural production, and his relevance in current discourses of nationhood. They do so through a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistics, feminist theory, film theory, historiography, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis and a host of other approaches that give novel insights in the critical analysis of the works under study. In the part entitled “Testimonies," a collection of conversations with people who worked closely with Sembene, each of the interlocutors provide illuminating insights into the man's life and work. The variety of themes and critical approaches in this critical anthology will certainly be of interest not only to students and scholars of African literature and cinema at various levels of intellectual and cultural sophistication but also anyone interested in the analysis of the nexus between power, culture, and the discourse of liberation.
Author: Trevor R. Getz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429982135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
This book focuses on retelling many of the important episodes in the global past (c.1500–present) from African points of view. It discusses the events and trends of global significance: the Atlantic slave system, the industrial revolution, World Wars I and II, and decolonization.
Author: Amadou Hampaté Bâ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253334299
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A novel on the evils of white colonialism in Africa. Set in French-ruled Mali, the hero is a young teacher who plays the white man's idea of a good Black in order to advance his career.
Author: Geoffrey Wood
Publisher: Waterbrook Press
ISBN: 1400073448
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Would you know if he did, if God really spoke to you– would it be booming from the heavens or just in your head? If it was in your head, how would you know if it was God or wasn’t? Is God speaking right now but we’re just not listening? And if God does tell you something…what would you do about it? Meet Parrish. He’s a regular guy, owns a coffee shop. He happens to be shooting the breeze with his buddies at the neighborhood Chinese buffet, talking about the dents in golf balls and such, when the discussion develops into a debate on whether or not God still speaks to people. When his friends skip out and he is left alone, Parrish tells God he's “all in.” Ready to listen, do what he’s told, and see what happens. Only moments later, back at his table, he opens his fortune cookie to find a surprise -- instead of a proverbial statement, he reads a directive from God. “Take the corner.” God, via cookie, sends him on this first step of a seemingly absurd adventure. His quest sends him to the corner bus stop, where he finds a dropped and forgotten letter, written in a desperate tone, to help those God brings across his path. There, Parrish befriends Audra, a nursing student who rides the bus home. And together they begin to follow the god cookie message, pursuing the random threads of the experiment, tying them together and discovering more about themselves than either ever imagined possible.
Author: Peter J. Schraeder
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780312076030
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
"Examines continuity and change in African politics and society from the precolonial era to the present, with particular focus on the post-Cold War era". -- Jacket.
