Download or read book Nation power and dissidence in third generation Nigerian poetry in English written by E. Egya and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2019-04-12 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation, Power and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry in English is a theoretical and analytical survey of the poetry that emerged in Nigeria in the 1980s. Hurt into poetry, the poets collectively raise aesthetics of resistance that dramatises the nationalist imagination bridging the gap between poetry and politics in Nigeria. The emerging generation of poetic voices raises an outcry against the repressive military regimes of the 1980s and 1990s. Ingrained in the tradition of protest literature in Africa, the third-generation poetry is presented here as part of the cultural struggles that unseat military despotism and envisage a democratic society.

Download or read book Nigeria s Third Generation Literature written by Ode Ogede and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-10 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the evolution and characteristics of Nigeria’s third-generation literature, which emerged between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era. The creative writing of this period reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about Nigeria’s changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in narrative techniques. This book examines six key texts of the oeuvre: Maria Ajima’s The Web, Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole’s Open City, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck. The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise; together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-driven narratives. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary African literature, Sociology, Gender and women’s studies, and post-colonial cultural expression more broadly.

Download or read book Indigeneity Globalization and African Literature written by Tanure Ojaide and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-07 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature remains one of the few disciplines that reflect the experiences, sensibility, worldview, and living realities of its people. Contemporary African literature captures the African experience in history and politics in a multiplicity of ways. Politics itself has come to intersect and impact on most, if not all, aspects of the African reality. This relationship of literature with African people’s lives and condition forms the setting of this study. Tanure Ojaide’s Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking belongs with a well-established tradition of personal reflections on literature by African creative writer-critics. Ojaide’s contribution brings to the table the perspective of what is now recognized as a “second generation” writer, a poet, and a concerned citizen of Nigeria’s Niger Delta area.

Download or read book Nigeria Nationalism and Writing History written by Toyin Falola and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book traces the history of writing about Nigeria since the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the rise of nationalist historiography and the leading themes. The second half of the twentieth century saw the publication of massive amounts of literature on Nigeria by Nigerian and non-Nigerian historians. This volume reflects on that literature, focusing on those works by Nigerians in thecontext of the rise and decline of African nationalist historiography. Given the diminishing share in the global output of literature on Africa by African historians, it has become crucial to reintroduce Africans into historicalwriting about Africa. As the authors attempt here to rescue older voices, they also rehabilitate a stale historiography by revisiting the issues, ideas, and moments that produced it. This revivalism also challenges Nigerian historians of the twenty-first century to study the nation in new ways, to comprehend its modernity, and to frame a new set of questions on Nigeria's future and globalization. In spite of current problems in Nigeria and its universities, that historical scholarship on Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) has come of age is indisputable. From a country that struggled for Western academic recognition in the 1950s to one that by the 1980s had emerged as one of the most studied countries in Africa, Nigeria is not only one of the early birthplaces of modern African history, but has also produced members of the first generation of African historians whose contributions to the development and expansion of modern African history is undeniable. Like their counterparts working on other parts of the world, these scholars have been sensitive to the need to explore virtually all aspects of Nigerian history. The book highlights the careers of some of Nigeria's notable historians of the first and second generation. Toyin Falola is Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Saheed Aderinto is Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University.

Download or read book Narrow Nationalisms and Third Generation Nigerian Fiction written by Meredith Armstrong Coffey and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade or so, many literary critics hold, has witnessed a substantial shift in African fiction: nationalist commitments, integral to older African writers' work, have faded from younger Africans' literary visions, which often engage wide transnational networks instead. In contrast to this dominant critical narrative, however, the dissertation contends that younger writers have not rejected nationalism, but have revised it in myriad ways to meet contemporary needs. Moreover, I argue not against the existence of a transnational turn, but rather that there is an additional, local dimension, which has received little attention. In the texts I examine, withdrawals into smaller networks function hand in hand with reconfigurations of nationalism, ultimately resulting in what I term “narrow nationalisms.” To make this case, the dissertation focuses on a selection of novels by third generation Nigerian authors-those born after the country's 1960 independence-about three interrelated areas of crisis: oil conflict in southern Nigeria, the rise of cybercrime, and the so-called “brain drain.” I analyze how narrow nationalisms operate in Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow (2006), Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2010), Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009), Sefi Atta's A Bit of Difference (2012), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013). Whether they are more about sovereignty, ideology, or belonging, the narrow nationalisms of the primary texts all contest longstanding wisdom that nationalism is about imposing ideology from above, especially as characters retreat into smaller communities from which they attempt to catalyze bottom-up, grassroots change. What, then, are the implications of Nigerian fiction's continued engagement with nationalism for the study of contemporary African literature? Further, in a country that is already fractured in terms of political control and allegiances, and in an era in which the role of the nation-state remains uncertain, what might narrow nationalisms suggest about Nigerian sovereignty? Examining narrow nationalist spaces in third generation Nigerian writing not only complicates literary critical conversations but also reveals new insight into challenges for the present-day Nigerian state-and for Africa and the global south more widely.

Download or read book Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Download or read book Nature Environment and Activism in Nigerian Literature written by Sule E. Egya and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature, Environment, and Activism in Nigerian Literature is a critical study of environmental writing, covering a range of genres and generations of writers in Nigeria. With a sustained concentration on the Nigerian experience in postcolonial ecocriticism, the book pays attention to textual strategies as well as distinctive historicity at the heart of the ecological force in contemporary writing. Focusing on nature, the environment, and activism, the author decentres African ecocriticism, affirming the eco-social vision that differentiates environmental writing in Nigeria from those of other nations on the continent. The book demonstrates how Nigerian writers, beyond connecting themselves to the natures of their communities, respond to ecological problems through indigenous literary instrumentalism. Anchored on the analytical concepts of nature, environment, and activism, the study is definitive in foregrounding the contribution of Nigerian writing to studies in ecocriticism at continental and global levels. This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Postcolonial literature, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities.

Download or read book Nigeria s Third Generation Novel written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book No Longer at Ease written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-28 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” —Margaret Atwood “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison A classic story of moral struggle in an age of turbulent social change and the final book in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy When Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. No Longer at Ease, the third and concluding novel in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy, depicts the uncertainties that beset the nation of Nigeria, as independence from colonial rule loomed near. In Obi Okonkwo’s experiences, the ambiguities, pitfalls, and temptations of a rapidly evolving society are revealed. He is part of a ruling Nigerian elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. His fate, however, overtakes him as he finds himself trapped between the expectation of his family, his village—both representations of the traditional world of his ancestors—and the colonial world. A story of a man lost in cultural limbo, and a nation entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease is a powerful metaphor for his generation of young Nigerians.

Download or read book This House Has Fallen written by Karl Maier and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To understand Africa, one must understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen is a bracing and disturbing report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation. Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. Though Nigeria is a nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, its per capita income has fallen dramatically in the past two decades. Military coup follows military coup. A bellwether for Africa, it is a country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, very possibly on the verge of utter collapse -- a collapse that could dramatically overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda. A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, This House Has Fallenlooks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope. Updated with a new preface by the author.

Download or read book The Fishermen written by Chigozie Obioma and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking debut novel about an unforgettable childhood, by a Nigerian writer the New York Times has crowned "the heir to Chinua Achebe." Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book's characters and readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, THE FISHERMEN is an essential novel about Africa, seen through the prism of one family's destiny.

Download or read book The Icarus Girl written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jessamy Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of a powerful imagination, she spends hours writing, reading or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the half-and-half child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can't shake off the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and other kids are wary of her terrified fits of screaming. When she is taken to her mother's family compound in Nigeria, she encounters Titiola, a ragged little girl her own age. It seems that at last Jess has found someone who will understand her. TillyTilly knows secrets both big and small. But as she shows Jess just how easy it is to hurt those around her, Jess begins to realise that she doesn't know who TillyTilly is at all.

Download or read book Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood Project written by Toyin Falola and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how modern Nigerian fiction is rooted in writers’ understanding of their identity and perception of Nigeria as a country and home. Surveying a broad range of authors and texts, the book shows how these fictionalized representations of Nigeria reveal authentic perceptions of Nigeria’s history and culture today. Many of the lessons in these works of literature provide cautionary tales and critiques of Nigeria, as well as an examination of the lasting impact of colonialism. Furthermore, the book presents the nation as both the framework and subject of its narrative. By conducting literary analyses of Nigerian fiction with historical reference points, this work demonstrates how Nigerian literature can convey profound themes and knowledge that resonates with audiences, teaching Nigerians and non-Nigerians about the colonial and postcolonial experience. The chapters cover topics on nationhood, women’s writing, postcolonial modernity, and Nigerian literature in the digital age.

Download or read book Transborder Pastoral Nomadism and Human Security in Africa written by Richard Olaniyan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the nexus between political borders, pastoral nomadism, and human security in Africa. It uses a host of applied interdisciplinary insights to analyse social, political, and cultural processes, circumstances, and consequences to showcase the human security crisis in the context of climate change, inter-group relations, leadership strategies, institutions, and governance within the region. With a special focus on West Africa and Nigeria, the volume discusses crucial themes that highlight the role of borders in the security architecture of the region which include, • Political economy of herdsmen-farmers’ conflicts in West Africa; • The scarcity-migration perspective of the Sahel region; • Population pressure, urbanization, and nomadic pastoral violence in West Africa; • Human trafficking and kidnapping for ransom in Nigeria; • Drivers of ‘labour’ migration of Fulani herders to Ghana, and other topics. A key contribution to a pressing issue, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political science, anthropology, geography, international relations, literature, environmental science, and peace and conflict studies.

Download or read book A Life Elsewhere written by Segun Afolabi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the characters in Segun Afolabi's debut collection, 'elsewhere' is a place they must transform into home. In the award-winning 'Monday Morning' a refugee boy puzzles out his place in a new land. A bereaved father in 'Arithmetic' thinks back to a confusing, youthful sexual encounter that has left him emotionally scarred; Jacinta faces a long retirement with a husband she is not sure she likes in 'Jumbo and Jacinta' and 'The Wine Guitar' tells the story of an aging musician who pays a prostitute for the gift of her youth. These are tales of diaspora, of people making their lives in new lands. Moving, funny and occasionally shocking, Afolabi's stories reflect the way we live now. A Life Elsewhere was shorlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Download or read book Zahrah the Windseeker written by Nnedi Okorafor and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zahrah, a timid thirteen-year-old girl, undertakes a dangerous quest into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle to seek the antidote for her best friend after he is bitten by a snake, and finds knowledge, courage, and hidden powers along the way.

Download or read book The Poetics and Politics of 21st Century Nigerian Writing written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several changes on the socio-political front--the dominance of women writers, the demise of the African Writers' Series and emergence of the Caine prize for African Writing, and the turn to democracy in 1999--have all contributed to reshaping the context in which Nigerian literature is produced in the 21st century. While Nigerian writers of the first and second generations largely aligned their poetics and politics to the ideological imperatives of prevailing anticolonialist and nationalist struggles, political and material changes in the 21st century have spurred a more diffuse literary topography and created a subtle yet significant shift in the poetics and politics of third generation writing. This dissertation explores the contours and characteristics of 21st century Nigerian writing as particularly emblematic of what is being called third generation Nigerian writing and argues that the writing of the third generation emerges as a reaction to the dominance of macropolitics in previous generations. In contrast to the relatively homogenous approach to politics in the first generation, third generation writers' disavowal of nationalist politics allows for a more heterogeneous, multifaceted approach to politics hinged on their exploration of individual subjectivity and the affective realm. Although the writers react against the excessive politicization of Nigerian literature by exploring affective dimensions of freedom, their ability to depart from the writing of previous generations remains constrained by the persistence of global forces of oppression. As such, they invariably produce similar literary strategies and arguments even as they move away from the explicitly political themes that preoccupied the writing of their predecessors. Through readings of ,Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Walking with Shadows by Jude Dibia, and Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, this dissertation shows how subjectivity and individualism become foregrounded in the literature.