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It is acknowledged that creative writing, anywhere, remains a rather intensely personal affair, without being private. And indeed, it is because of the lack of privacy in creative writing that a nation should encourage the growth of its literary tradition. Writers do not just tell their stories or poets show their emotions; in their moods, they assume a multidimensional posture so as to be able to tell universally acceptable stories to appeal to different human senses. The contributors to this anthology are mostly first time writers, whose works have not appeared in mainstream literary journals and publications. While a few names among these contributors may be known in the local Sierra Leonean literary circles as having produced one kind of work or the other, their names are largely unknown outside of Sierra Leone. This situation has to change and is the reason that Leoneanthology has been compiled and published.
What are Sierra Leonean and diaspora authors writing about today? What genres are they working in? What are future possibilities and directions of travel? The ethnically and linguistically diverse nation of Sierra Leone boasts a rich cultural legacy and, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, has built an internationally recognized literary canon despite the ravages caused by a brutal civil war and then the Ebola and Covid pandemics. While acknowledging the country's literary and creative heritage dating back to the mid-twentieth century, this book interrogates a number of prominent themes and critical perspectives on Sierra Leone's contemporary literature. Drawing from body studi...
June 17, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This publication provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the editorial adviser. Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature captures the energy of literary publishing in a new and undefined field. Portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers make Africa Writes Back a stand-out book. James Currey’s voice and insights are an added bonus. CONTENTS Publishing and selling the African Writers Serie...
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Protagonist Fina's search for happiness and belonging begins on the night of her aborted circumcision and continues through her teenage years in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital; her twenties in the Washington Metropolitan Area; and ends with her return to Sierra Leone to work as an advocate for war-traumatized children. The novel explores the problems she encounters in each setting against the backdrop of the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the stranger/immigrant condition and the characters' struggles to clarify their ideas about "home" and "abroad." Fina's circumcision gets significant, though not sensational, play in the different attitudes toward the practice between her and her fiance Cammy, a Trinidadian urologist. The differences complicate their relationship at a time when skeletons from their pasts threaten their impending marriage. The stories of Fina's friend, African-American Aman and her fiance, Nigerian Bayo; of Edna (Fina's foster sister) and her husband Kizzy; and of Mawaf, a war-traumatized teen, unfold in subplots that merge with the main plot and overarching theme of belonging as characters straddle "home" and "abroad" places."
The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book contains over 600 entries that cover criticism and theory, its development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers.
"Gbanabom Hallowell's poems are free flowing and he delivers them with flourish, aplomb, and satirical agility. His poems do not lack the classic surrealism, which are pertinent to poems of anguish. Reading Hallowell seems to confirm that beyond art form, poetry can be a soul-searching vehicle that offers a glimpse into the conscience of mankind, a nation and a poet's mindset---some form of refractive mirror. He has met the litmus test of having transcended the threshold that all aspiring poets must accost..." Oseloka Obaze, Critic and Author of Regarscent Past: a collection of poems
Because of the many roles he has played in the country, Looking Back is much more than Dr. Sama Banya's life story. In a lively and entertaining manner, he takes the reader through the chequered history of Sierra Leone from the colonial era to the present providing, along the way, accounts of the origin of Kailahun, his home town, the Kissy/Mende chiefs from whom he descends, life in Bo School where he had the early part of his secondary school education, as well as insights into the workings of the civil service in his day. A physician by profession, Dr. Sama BAnyha is best known as a politician. He served as a cabinet minister under two presidents, and his deep knowledge of political machinations in Sierra Leone as seen from both sides of the parliamentary divide, makes this autobiography an altogether fascinating read.
This collection of poems examines the causes of the African, specifically Sierra Leonean, condition, evaluates the African immigrant's situation in the West, hints at the role and culpability of corporate West in African wars and woes, and concludes that Africans must ultimately assume the responsibility of rebuilding their continent.
The stories in the anthology flash different pictures of being in their unique time capsules. The writers have examined the toll the collective human trauma has taken and brought on board on the Sierra Leonean way of life, a way of life that now requires a new way of life. 'In the Belly of the Lion' represents the voices of the generation of writers whose works came of age in the middle of the war and after...