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Justice and Human Dignity, a collection of essays, is an assemblage of critical and well-researched essays projecting new theoretical and empirical hindsight from multidisciplinary perspectives. This books will be of special interest to academics, researchers and students of African Literature, Children's Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Religion, Media Studies, History, Economics, Finance, Political Science, Leadership and Governance, Peace and Conflict Studies, Gender Studies and Studies in African Diaspora. In all, the essays provide new and veritable insights on how past and recent issues and challenges bordering on themes of Justice and Human Dignity affect Africa and Africans in the 21st century.
Comparative Studies in African Dirge Poetry is an important contribution to research in African literature by Nigerian scholar GMT Emezue. Emezue sets out to portray the role and function of African dirge. Moving from the general (African milieu) to the specific (Igbo heritage) she explores written and oral modes of poetic expressions. Emezue also posits a theory of the African dirge with features comparatively distinctive from the formalised structures of western art. GMT Emezue's interest in traditional African dirge songs and modern poetry is borne from her conviction that nowhere in the corpus of oral poetry have there been more works of heightened creativity than the dirge forms.
Wanjohi wa Makokha's Nest of Stones is the second book of poems, since the publication of Sitawa Namwalie's Cut off my Tongue (Storymoja: 2009), devoted in principal to the moment of the 2007-2008 Kenyan Crisis. The crisis is locally known as the Post-Election Violence (PEV). The book collects over sixty pieces of his recent verse chosen on the basis of artistic merit and social relevance. The poems focus sharply on the tumultuous period between the General Elections of 2007 and August 4th Referendum of 2010. Some of the poems relate to events drawn out of earlier moments in Kenyan history but are invoked as contexts of the recent discord. Wa Makokha's interesting narratives are written in t...
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Gender Issues in African Literature examines the ways in which some protagonists of African fictions are made to counter and challenge intertwined Western discourses on gender, employment, sexuality, and health. Here the conflict between Tradition and Modernity is argues from the favourite premise of male supremacist ideology showing how women have 'unlearned' these false concepts to build a sustained feminist movement and (re)learn the value of sisterhood. There is a bold attempt to reread Achebe as a consistent in urging women to fight the seemingly oppressive structures that have traditionally discriminated against them, and to disregard their diversity and embrace their unity. A chapter of Feminist Re-writing disagrees with the attempt to equate theory with political activism and presents Feminist literature as more than a verbal assertion that points to Feminist aesthetics and politics. The use of the trauma theory and testimony literature to explore traumatisation of female characters and its impact for Zimbabwean civil society is a useful addition to these gender studies in African literature.
Bequeathing an enduring tenet for the creative enterprise, African Short Stories vol 2 boldly seeks to upturn the status quo by the art of narration. Whether they are stories of the whistle blower estranged and yet sounding the warning for heaven and earth to hear, or a ragtag army fleeing in the wake of a monstrous reptilian onslaught upon her peace, there pervades a sense of ultimate victory in this collection. We can feel the gentle kick of a baby in the womb of a maiden in desperation, or we can muse at the two adolescent genii on the trail of their dreams from the sunset of mutual deceit into the daylight of true becoming. Victory is laid out in that awesome kindness of a total stranger which affirms the divinity latent in even our most harrowing existence. With thirty five stories in two parts these literary experiments compel attention to the courageous hearts and minds that brighten the African universe of narration. Their vibrant notes coming from all corners of north, west, east and south fill us with encouragement and optimism for the contemporary short fiction in Africa.
This edition commits to the depths of black identities in modern black texts. The cultural reclamation of an African origin and/or roots as tied to the solemn remembrance of the Ancestor has demanded the intense attention of enlightened black writers for the social and psychic revaluation of their generation and others that follow. In this series we further examine the status of the oral performer in African traditional societies which encouraged a wide range of human expression to create identity for members of the community Africa -and we have proposed a challenge to sustain the methods of creative transmission through the continuing presence of these African performers who are living proofs of the survival of her oral traditions, especially in the propulsion of communicative action and the communicative strength of men, women and children in the community.