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Abiola is a clever young warrior in West Africa and part of a highly developed, ritualized society that is rich not only in trade but in metaphorical and spiritual understanding. But neither his prowess nor the sophistication of his culture can save him from betrayal, capture, and being sold into slavery. Abiola's story ends when he is given a new name--Cornelius--and becomes the property of a Frenchman who sells harpsichords in the American South. Eventually Cornelius runs away and joins the British who are fighting the Americans. If the British win, he reasons, he may gain his freedom. But the British lose the American War of Independence, and Cornelius and his family are eventually repatriated back to West Africa and the newly founded country of Sierra Leone. But all is not as Cornelius had dreamed: Sierra Leone is run like a colony, and though trading in slaves has been officially banned, in practice it continues, having become ever more lucrative for being driven underground. Cornelius’s daughter, Epiphany, however, has discovered that she has the same gift of metaphorical and spiritual understanding as her ancestors, and she seeks to use it for the aid of her family.
Ogunyemi uses the novels to trace a Nigerian women's literary tradition that reflects an ideology centered on children and community. Of prime importance is the paradoxical Mammywata figure, the independent, childless mother, who serves as a basis for the postcolonial woman in the novels and in society at large. Ogunyemi tracks this figure through many permutations, from matriarch to writer, her multiple personalities reflecting competing loyalties. This sustained critical study counters prevailing "masculinist" theories of black literature in a powerful narrative of the Nigerian world.
This book contains an extraordinary collection of short stories and novel extracts written by Africans living outside Africa. It is a collection that also examines the little unknown area of an African experience of living abroad, with themes of identity, belonging and culture as well. Where is home? How does our identity change when we move to a new country, or when national borders are eroded by globalization? These are some of the themes explored in this collection of new fiction from African writers living outside the continent. The writers of the stories and novel extracts come from countries as diverse as Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania and the Sudan. They include both established writers, such as Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo and Abdulrazak Gurnah, and many exciting new voices. By turns humorous, fantastic, satirical and moving, the fiction reveals new worlds to us. This book travels the globe with African writers.
Greed, frustrated love, traffic jams, infertility, politics, polygamy. These--together with depictions of traditional village life and the impact of colonialism made familiar to Western readers through Chinua Achebe's writing--are the stuff of Nigerian fiction. Bearing Witness examines this varied content and the determined people who, against all odds, write, publish, sell, and read novels in Africa's most populous nation. Drawing on interviews with Nigeria's writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers, surveys, and a careful reading of close to 500 Nigerian novels--from lightweight romances to literary masterpieces--Wendy Griswold explores how global cultural flows and local conflicts me...
EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.
Filmmaker Alex Cox's thoughtful autobiography examines his craft and influences, as well as providing his insights into many of his favorite films. Sometimes called a radical, Cox is a quintessential auteur, as well as an internationally focused, insightful critic and writer whose passion for film has gripped him since childhood. In addition to being a captivating look into Cox's process, this book also encourages and instructs would-be independent filmmakers, guiding the next generation of film pioneers through the arduous journey of creation. Cox weaves his own "confessions" with his notes to the new guard, including thoughts on new forms of digital distribution and his radical views on intellectual property — the result is a readable, startling treatise on both the film innovations of today and the thrilling potential of future filmmaking.
This volume lists the work produced on anglophone black African literature between 1997 and 1999. This bibliographic work is a continuation of the highly acclaimed earlier volumes compiled by Bernth Lindfors. Containing about 10,000 entries, some of which are annotated to identify the authors discussed, it covers books, periodical articles, papers in edited collections and selective coverage of other relevant sources.
... this collection ponders on the ways language and literature have integrated other disciplines and how these disciplines have imprinted themselves on these two. It constitutes a diverse and rich compendium on what happens when language and literature not only reach out to each other but to other disciplines as well. It is thus a concrete appraisal of the interactions amongst and between disciplines. Nfor Sessekou Professor Edward Oben Ako
Through an examination of material and institutional circumstances, through the study of work shop practices and of technical and aesthetic experimentation, this book seeks to give an account of the ways in which Renaissance prints were realized, distributed, acquired, and handled by their public.
This volume describes the context and methodology of Christian theology by Africans in the past two decades and provides brief descriptions of sample treatments of theological issues, such as creation, Christology, ecclesiology and eschatology. The aim of the book is to lead interested persons to the sources of African women's Christian theology. Throughout an effort has been made to illustrate how African culture and the multi-religious context has influenced Christian women's selection of theological issues. The importance of daily life to theology and the attempt to probe the spirituality of African Christian women is also evident in this introduction to African women's theology.