This ambitious and comprehensive volume of essays, edited by two committed scholars, mirrors a collection of insights, analyses and approaches to the works by Ghana's foremost woman writer, who has prevailed for over thirty years on the African literature scene by her sheer tenacity of purpose and the freshness of her writing. Ama Ata Aidoo comes across as a sturdy, well-rounded, dignified and reputable writer of world class…
Prof. Ernest N. Emenyonu says, "The editors have finally filled an embarrassing gap in African feminist studies."
Prof. Obioma Nnaemeka writes, "…this collection…memorialize Ama Ata Aidoo's deep sense of history and consciousness of a feminism that is unyielding in its inscription of the balance and wisdom of Africa."
As writer and director of at least seven full-length feature films and many documentaries, Ousmane Sembene is probably Africa's best-known film-maker; he is also the author of nine volumes of fiction. Given his long career, beginning with the publication of Le Docker Noir in 1956, it is surprising that so little has been written about him, and this collection of essays, interviews and dialogue provides useful supplementary information and commentary. C. L. Innes TLS Dec 2, 94
Harrow's analysis of individual texts is detailed and perceptive. His discussion of the intertextuality between works, and between literary and oral traditions provides many new insights. C. L. Innes TLS Dec 2, 94
This is the first title published by James Currey under the Hans Zell Publishers imprint. The volume is a continuation of Bernth Lindfors's earlier volumes, the most recent of which was Black African Literature in English, 1987-1991 (London: Hans Zell Publishers, an imprint of Bowker-Saur, 1995), which was the joint winner of the ASA's Africana Librarians Council 1996 Conover-Porter Award. The new volume lists 13,500 entries - some of which are annotated to identify the authors discussed - covering books, periodical articles, papers in edited collections and selective coverage of other relevant sources. Also included are a substantial number of African newspaper and magazine articles. Indexes by author, title, subject, and geographical index.
A collection of stories and dramas in which 'we find tyrants, fetish priests, slave traders, naughty princesses, warlords and witch doctors'. Bib, 223pp. UK . MINERVA PRESS, 07541091191999 PB
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-AfrTeach@h-netmsu.edu (July 2001)
Joyce Moss and Lorraine Valestuk. African Literature and its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. World Literature and Its Times, V. 2. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. xlv + 544 pp. Illustrations, bibliography and index. High school and college. (cloth), ISBN 0-7876-3727-0.
Reviewed for H-AfrTeach by Paul H. Thomas
African Literature with a View towards History
This is the second volume in this well-received series edited by Joyce Moss and Lorraine Valestuk. The first volume (on Latin American literature) won the American Library Association's RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) award as one of the outstanding reference works of 1999. There is no doubt this volume will be as highly acclaimed.
The basic premise of the editors of this series is that they feel fiction is an excellent tool that may be used to help students understand both the differences and similarities between the various peoples and cultures of the world. They feel that a literary work can inculcate in a student a feeling for a time period or issue that would normally be lacking in a textbook. Conversely, the editors also feel that full understanding of a literary work requires knowledge of the social, cultural and historical milieu in which it was written. Therefore, each title analyzed in one of these volumes includes information about the historical circumstances in which it was conceived and written and how it helps us understand some aspect of history.
The volume under review analyses fifty African literary works that were selected by university professors with an eye to representing as great a number of the literary-historical connections mentioned above as possible. Each work chosen to be in this volume is felt, therefore, to illustrate some particular point in the historical development of the peoples of Africa. In addition, consideration in selecting the works to be included was also given to how often a literary work is studied. The editors consciously have tried to select authors who were representative of all races and a variety of ethnic groupings, and care was taken so that both men and women authors were represented. Works are included from and about all geographical regions, including North Africa and Egypt. While most of the selected works were originally published in English, some were first published in Arabic, Afrikaans, French, Portuguese or indigenous African languages.
There was also an attempt to represent a variety of literary genres, including, for example, diaries, speeches, folklore and market literature. While there were a few offerings of pre-colonial literature, the vast majority of titles discussed were taken from the colonial and post-colonial periods.
The works are arranged alphabetically by title, and each is subsequently arranged as follows. There is a general introduction that places the work in context and provides a basic synopsis. Next there is an attempt to juxtapose the work with historical events that took place elsewhere at the time the story takes place. The third section summarizes in greater detail the plot, discusses how the work is particularly illustrative of some historical theme, looks at sources that may have inspired it, and finally takes a look at its overall literary context. A fourth section places the literary work more fully in the context of historical events happening when it was written, and a fifth section presents a list of bibliographical references (both works cited and suggestions for additional reading). In addition, wherever possible, primary sources are given through the use of quotations in the text and sidebars. The sidebars also provide additional details and amplify issues raised in the text. The authors have done a good job in trying to define terms that are specifically African. A short, but useful introduction and a Chronology of Relevant Events that compares historical events in Africa with related literary works precede the entries.
Some of the titles discussed are certainly the classics of African literature. We find Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton; The Rivonia Trial Speech by Nelson Mandela; Efuru by Flora Nwapa, So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba; God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene; The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon; Equiano's Travels; and Ibn Battuta in Black Africa. From those titles alone one can see four of the major themes being covered are apartheid, women's place in society, resistance to colonial rule, and travels in the pre-colonial era. While not all of the other titles are as well known, all do their jobs well in illustrating the varieties of the African experience through literature. The scope of ideas, cultures, politics and history presented in this selection of literary works is excellent.
While this series is evidently aimed at a secondary school audience, and certainly belongs in any high school library, it would also be a welcome addition to public library and college collections as well. It should also be of immense value to teachers who are looking to supplement reading lists for social studies or history classes and who have little or no background in African history or literature.
Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
H-NET List for African History and Culture [H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU]
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 From: Peter Limb, U Western Australia
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CULTURAL STUDIES (previously African Languages and Cultures)
Volume 12 Number 2 December 1999
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Special Issue: Literature and history
Literature and History: Introduction Nana Wilson-Tagoe & Kwadwo Osei-Nyame 117
Social history, literary history, and historical fiction in South Africa Michael Green 121
Pan-Africanist ideology and the African historical novel of self-discovery: the examples of Kobina Sekyi and J. E. Casely Hayford Kwadwo Osei-Nyame 137
Narrative, history, novel: intertextuality in the historical novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and Yvonne Vera Nana Wilson-Tagoe 155
The politics of Black Identity: Slave Ship and Woza Albert! Francis Ngaboh-Smart 167
Linkages of history in the narrative of Close Sesame Raymond Ntalindwa 187
'Traduttore Traditore'? Alexis Kagame's transposition of Kinyarwanda poetry into French Anthere Nzabatsinda 203
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This important new book is a critical introduction to the rapidly expanding field of postcolonial studies. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the author draws on literary criticism, philosophy, anthropology, history and politics to develop a distinctive account of postcolonialism.
Quayson discusses key debates in the field, including the implications of various forms of interdisciplinarity for postcolonial studies, the relationship between indigenous knowledge and contemporary historiography, the links between postmodernism and postcolonialism and the insights of feminism for postcolonial theory. He explores the relevance of these debates for cultural, literary and political criticism.
Throughout the text, he stresses the importance of seeing postcolonialism as a process of analysis which does not simply refer to another stage after colonialism, but to a continuing struggle against colonialism and its effects.
He discusses the work of Rushdie, Morrison, Achebe, Soyinka and Okri, amongst others; many of his examples are drawn from African cultures, an area which has been hitherto neglected by postcolonial theory.
H-AFRLITCINE@H-NET.MSU.EDU 12-02-99
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-List@msu.edu
Reviewed for H-List by Sheila Petty, Sheila.Petty@uregina.ca, Department of Film and Video, University of Regina (extract)
African Literature and the Postcolonial Debate
In Postcolonial African Writers: a Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne undertake the ambitious project of creating an overview of a diverse group of African literary authors under the auspices of a single volume. A much-needed sourcebook, this work brings together resources that would normally be scattered over several volumes and presents a critical examination of the issues, advantages and shortcomings of postcolonial theory as it relates to African writing.
In the preface to this book, Parekh states that "the central organizing principle of the volume is postcoloniality as it is reflected in the novels, poetry, prose, and drama of major, minor, and emerging writers from diverse countries of Africa, including representative North and South African writers and writers of the Indian diaspora born in Africa, both male and female" (p. xiv). In addition, the editors have set themselves the task of creating a gender balance in terms of the selection of writers and contributors. In a response to the "center-versus-margin construction of identities and ideologies" (p. xv), the editors locate known and emerging men and women writers side by side in order to place full focus on African contexts, possibilities and problematics and the shape and meaning of African theoretical preoccupations (p. xv).
The book consists of sixty bio-bibliographical and critical entries organized into the following categories: biography, major works and themes, critical reception and bibliography which consists of selected works and selected studies. Of these, the major works and themes and critical reception sections are vital in advancing the book's goals because it is here that works are discussed in the context of "postcoloniality". In addition, works are also situated within the historical and cultural context of the authors' contemporaries. This resists the compartmentalization of individual African writers either by stature or gender and allows for a greater sense of African literature as a whole comprised of many strands.
In her foreword to the book, Carole Boyce Davies asserts that "its primary and most important contribution is that it accounts concretely for a range of writers of a specific geographic specificity within the larger field of postcolonial studies... a body of writers emanating from the African cultural experience" (p. x). The volume advances this project by the inclusion of new writers such as Mositi Torontle (Botswana) and Tijan Sallah (Gambia) alongside established luminaries such as Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) and Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya). Thus, the book possesses unusual breadth and documents African literature as a vibrant and continually unfolding literary practice. Reviewed for H-AfrLitCine by Carine M. Mardorossian
H-NET List for African Literature and Cinema [H-AFRLITCINE@H-NET.MSU.EDU] Date: Wednesday, January 20, 1999 11:42 AM Subject: Book Review: Mardorossian on Booker, The African Novel in English
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-AfrLitCine@msu.edu (January, 1999)
Keith Booker's The African Novel in English provides an excellent introduction to the discussion of selected African novels as well as to the critical and theoretical debates that have accompanied African literature's rise to prominence.
The African Novel consists of three basic parts: The first section introduces the reader to three main issues (history, language, genre) necessary to understanding African cultural practices in their own historical and aesthetic contexts.
The second part provides a literary history of the African novel written in English. It also, however, includes a brief overview of lusophone and francophone African fiction whose discussion Booker otherwise deliberately excludes "as part of a general emphasis on accessibility to American and British undergraduate readers" (p. ix).
The third and longest part of this textbook includes extended discussions of eight novels written in English, their historical background, and their author's biography. The eight books discussed are: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Buchi Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood (Nigeria), Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy (Ghana), Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter and Alex La Guma's In the Fog of the Season's End (South Africa), Nguigi wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross (Kenya) and Tsitsi Dangerembga's Nervous Conditions (Zimbabwe). Booker explains his omission of difficult writers like Nigeria's Wole Soyinka and South Africa's Bessie Head in terms of the emphasis on accessibility mentioned above.
. . . The African Novel provides an informed and lucid introduction to the African novel written in English. It offers detailed and careful analyses of important individual texts as well as an overview of the influential theoretical and critical debates that have been waged in postcolonial studies of the novel. The historical context provided with each textual analysis will be valuable to teachers and students of African literature, especially where Booker explicitly engages this background's relation to the text under scrutiny.
Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, pleasecontact H-Net@h-net.msu.edu
H-NET BOOK REVIEWPublished by H-AfrLitCine@h-net.msu.edu (March, 1998)
Reviewed for H-Africa by L. Natalie Sandomirsky
The Liminal Novel
This book is a study of three novels which were originally written in French and first published in Paris between 1953 and 1961, when the modern francophone African novel was in its infancy and the Negritude movement was still influential.
The three novels are Camara Laye's The Black Child, the story of Camara's childhood in Guinea, of his education prior to his departure for Oaris, and of his qualms regarding hisdecision to remain in France; Mongo Beti's Mission to Kala, the story of young Jean-Marie Mezda's reverses in Cameroon after he failed to graduate from the French school; and Cheikh Hamidou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure, the story of Samba Diallo who, raised in a strict spiritual Koranic milieu and then sent to Paris to learn skills needed for the survival of his community, discovers the secular temptations of rational thought, and upon his return to Senegal is unable to reconcile the two worlds he has come in contact with, and perishes.
Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa claims in her introduction that hers is a new way of looking at these novels, that by grouping them as "liminal" and examining them as such we gain new insights (p. 1). She then defines "liminal" in accordance with Victor Turner's pattern for the rite of passage as marked by three phases: separation, limen or threshold, and reincorporation. In her book, then, she analyzes different themes of the novels which she considers important to prove her claim. Each chapter consists of a discussion of a different theme: the first addresses the concept of place; the second, the relationship between the individual and the community; the third, the acquisition of knowledge by the protagonists; the fourth, the failure of the main character to fill the role of the patriarch; the fifth, the protagonists' "movement between two cultural traditions"; and in the last chapter the author points out that the main characters suffer for not having mentors. In each chapter she presents all three novels from the particular point of view selected.
My assessment is that, while most of the elements studied separately in each chapter are valid, examining the novels as "liminal" fails to shed new light on them, and that the structure the author chose results in a fragmentary presentation. It actually detracts from her real contribution which is a sensitive, careful, intelligent, well documented, and well written textual analysis of the novels. . .
. . . In summary, assuming as I do that the novels studied in this book are still of general interest and are of sufficient literary merit to remain important, the author, while not achieving her aim, has written a book useful to readers of The Black Child and of Ambiguous Adventure in particular.
H-NET List for African History [H-AFRICA@h-net.msu.edu] Date: 22 Jan 1998
From: Gretchen Walsh, Boston University
Zeleze, Paul Tyiambe Visions of Freedom and Democracy in Postcolonial African Literature. p. 10-34
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Bayi, Omofolabo Negritude, Feminism, and the Quest for Identity: Re-Reading Mariama Ba's "So Long a Letter". 35-52
Thielmann, Pia Black-White Love in African Novels. p. 53-67
Sizemore, Christine Negotiating Between Ideologies: The Search for Identity in Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions: and Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye". p. 68-82
Scott, Joyce Hope Daughters of Yennenga: "Le Mal de Peau" and Feminine Voice in the Literature of Burkina Faso. p. 83-96
Mitifu, Faida M. Zairian Novelists and their Female Characters. p. 97-108
Cooper, Helen M. African and Caribbean Texts/White Critics and Teachers: The Searchfor New Academic Life. p. 109-120
Zucker, Marilyn Slutzky On Teaching "The Abandoned Baobab: A Senegalese Woman'sAutobiography". p. 121-138
Williams, Lisa Teaching Miriama Ba's "So Long a Letter" in a Women and Literature Course. p. 139-149
Miller, Judith G. Some thoughts on Producing African Theater in French with American Students. p. 150-158
Okafor, Clement A. Parabolic Decoding: Teaching J. P. Clark's Song of a Goat in a Global Classroom Environment. p. 159-168
Ojaide, Tanure African Literature and its Context: TeachingTeachers of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart". p. 169-177
Rasebotsa, Nobantu L. Teaching African Literature in the Department of English, University of Botswana. p. 178-187
Hale, Thomas A. "A Siin de me": Learning to Teach the African Oral Epic in African Literature Courses. p. 188-200
Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka Issues in African Feminism. p. 201-207
Nnaemeka, Obioma Black Women Writers. p. 208-224
Venkateswaran, Pramila Women's Issues in Global Context. p. 225-232
Hichcock, Peter Postcolonial Africa? Problems of Theory. p. 233-244
Allen, Tuzyline Jita Doing Archival Research in South Africa for Women Writing Africa, July and August 1996. p. 245-248
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a Professor of Performance Studies and the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. One of the most important writers of the 20th Century, Ngugi wa Thiong'o has published many definitive books including "Moving the Center: Struggle for Cultural Freedom" (1993) and "Decolonizing the Mind" (1986). He is the author of many memorable plays including "I Will Marry When I Want" and classic novels such as "Weep Not Child".
Ato Quayson reviews Achille Mbembe's On the Postcolony