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Maame is a collection of linked stories about women in a small community in Ghana. Life in the village is a constant rotation between the real and the supernatural. For girls there exists a short window between childhood and adulthood, in which they must learn to navigate a stringent code of conduct, if they are to succeed. But what is success? What makes a good mother? What happens when they have eventually had enough? Ahu is a young woman married at fifteen and widowed with two children at eighteen. She overcomes all odds to set an example for future generations of girls, to enable them to reach out beyond the limits imposed upon them through tradition. Through her beautifully told, lyrical stories about three generations of women, in a style that reflects her subject and setting, Ahu introduces us to her community, the beliefs and customs that swallow many of her compatriots, and her own renaissance that starts in her a personal rebellion and revolution.
The Black Atlantic Reconsidered is the first comprehensive work to explore Black Canadian literature from its beginnings to the present in the broader context of the Black Atlantic world. Winfried Siemerling traces the evolution of black Canadian witnessing and writing from slave testimony in New France and the 1783 "Book of Negroes" through the work of contemporary black Canadian writers including Austin Clarke, George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, Wayde Compton, and Esi Edugyan. Arguing that Black writing in Canada is deeply imbricated in a historic transnational network, Winfried Siemerling explores the powerful presence of Black Canadian history, slavery, the Underground Railroad, and the Black diaspora in the work of contemporary Black Canadian writers. Individual chapters examine the literature that has emerged from Quebec, Nova Scotia, the Prairies, and British Columbia, with attention to writing in both English and French.
An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city" Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, ...
To pursue her dream of building a life free from violence for her son and herself, Yalda flees from her nightmarish past as well as her troubled homeland, Iran. But in her new haven, she realizes that nightmares haunt not only her past, but also her present and future. She does what she can to survive, but all her plans dissolve like the shadows and ghosts that follow her. Having fled from an authoritarian regime, and now living in a North America panic-stricken by global terrorism, Yalda is obsessed with all the forms and aspects of violence. She is estranged from her beloved son, Nader, who trains to become an armed security guard, and this means he is wearing a uniform and carrying weapons, prepared to be violent. She cannot forget that her first love was shot and killed by a young prison guard and that her beloved stepbrother also met a violent death. This family history is a wound that makes guns taboo and Yalda yearns to feel safe in a troubled world. The novel is part memory, part dream, and part present, day-to-day struggles for immigrants living in Toronto and Montreal.
Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena. “Superb . . . Each story reaffirms how fundamental ‘place’ is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves . . . Strongly recommended.” —Library Journal “There’s good writing as well as a strong sense of place and culture, and the reader will absorb a side of Accra that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.” —New York Journal of Books Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Kwame Dawes, Adjoa Twum, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Billie McTernan, Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo, Patrick Smith, Anne Sackey, Gbontwi Anyetei, Nana-Ama Danquah, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, and Anna Bossman.
"For years, Zaya has delicately balanced his relationship with his Muslim faith and queer identity by keeping his genderqueer lover and manipulative mother apart. But when his mother ends up in the hospital on the same day his partner is leaving for pilgrimage, Zaya's worlds come crashing in on each other, opening a space for traumatic memories to resurface. Acha Bacha boldly explores the intersections between queerness, gender identity, and Islamic culture in the Pakistani diaspora. It's about the way we love, the way we are loved, and what it takes to truly accept love."--
In Mythical Man, David Ly builds, and then tears down, an army of men in a quest to explore personhood in the 21st century. Tenderness, toxic masculinity, nuances of queer love, and questions of race and identity mix in Ly's poetry, casting a spell that enters like ?a warm tongue on a first date.? Mythical Man is an authentic and accomplished debut.
'An astonishingly rich story... wonderfully informative' The Times 'Rappaport does a terrific job of bringing respectful rigour to her account of Seacole's extraordinary life' Daily Mail In Search of Mary Seacole is a superb and revealing biography that explores her remarkable achievements and unique status as an icon of the 19th century, but also corrects some of the myths that have grown around her life and career. Having been raised in Jamaica and worked in Panama, Mary Seacole came to England in the 1850s and volunteered to help out during the Crimean War. When her services were turned down, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where she earned her reputation as a nurse and for ...
On moving into a new apartment abroad in his Bavarian hometown, the narrator realises that some of his possessions and elements of his new neighbourhood open a window into a flurry of memories, serving as allegorical threads to his childhood, self-consciousness and discovery of the world. What begins as a personal narrative quickly cedes to a social archaeology, inviting the reader/listener on a homegoing journey in the backdrop of Cameroon’s tottering democratic trajectory. Modulated with poetry and music, The Radio tunes in to diaspora, home, nation, education, existence, religion as well as Mbum popular culture, showcasing creative re-appropriation and re-mixing of global trends and icons in specific communities.
Seven years after the publication of Firesmoke, Sheniz Janmohamed returns with her third collection of poetry, Reminders on the Path. The poet is wayfarer, exploring the path we inherit and seek out, that disappears with every step we take on it. At each step, there are reminders rooted in the ephemeral and the indelible. A companion on the path, a fleeting memory, a broken twig--all serve as guideposts to cross the threshold of one's self. Grounded in the language of place, these poems become stepping-stones from the author's past to the present, from forgetfulness to remembrance, and from the unknowing to a deep knowing only found through direct experience.