Download or read book Homage and Courtship written by Shadrach Ambanasom and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a collection of sixty-two beautifully crafted poems on some of the deepest of human emotions. They celebrate love, constancy, beauty, marriage, birth and death; in the poems are hailed intellectual labour, leadership and duty. Occasionally, the poet depicts the states of his mind against the backdrop of nature, interfusing description, memory and meditation in a manner essentially romantic. The best in Ambanasom's poetry is matter and manner combined. The striking force of the poems lies in the intriguing relationship between romanticism and romance. Ambanasom's romanticism is concerned with the concept of nature as a universal being or a cosmic entity, nostalgia, the attempt to link his childhood with the present and the future, and the response to nature at different levels of his development. The poet also demonstrates a penchant for rural subject matter, places and people. In the poet of romance there is a more direct expression of basic human emotions, in particular of love that is enchanting, possessing, seductive, and alluring. We find in the poems, love that is reciprocal and imbued with constancy and understanding.

Download or read book European language Writing in Sub Saharan Africa written by Albert S. Gérard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 1296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major comparative study of African writing in western languages, European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Albert S. Gérard, falls into four wide-ranging sections: an overview of early contacts and colonial developments “Under Western Eyes”; chapters on “Black Consciousness” manifest in the debates over Panafricanism and Negritude; a group of essays on mental decolonization expressed in “Black Power” texts at the time of independence struggles; and finally “Comparative Vistas,” sketching directions that future comparative study might explore. An introductory essay stresses the millennia of writing in Africa, side by side with a richly eloquent and artistic set of vernacular oral traditions; written and oral traditions have become interwoven in adaptations of imported forms and linguistic innovations that challenge traditional “high” literary norms. Gérard uses the mathematical concept of “fuzzy sets” to explain why the focus on “Black Africa” has led him to set aside for future analysis the literatures produced in North Africa, which fall under the influence of Muslim civilization, as well as the diasporic literatures of the New World. Over sixty scholars from twenty-two countries contribute specialized studies of creative writing by leading authors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Achebe, Mphahlele, Ngugi, Senghor, Soyinka, and Tutuola. Critical analyses are organized primarily around regions, reflecting different colonial languages imposed through schools and other social institutions. Some authors trace the adaptation of western genres, others identify syncretism with folktales or myths. The volumes are attentive to the heterogeneity of national literatures addressed to polyethnic and multilingual populations, and they note the instrumental politics of language in newly independent states. A closing chapter, “Tasks Ahead,” identifies areas for future scholars to explore.

Download or read book Laughing Store written by Linus Tongwo Asong and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughing Store is just what we need in times of troubles and uncertainties such as these. A book of humour from an acclaimed master of laughter, it lifts our hearts and raises our spirits. Jokes that touch about every domain of existence - from sex to religion, from births to deaths, from politics to the beer parlour, from the courtroom to the hospital. And most important of all, conceived in the supremely original Cameroonian flavour of jokes.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies written by John Charles Hawley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-09-30 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of empires has resulted in a remarkable flourishing of indigenous cultures in former colonies. The end of the colonial era has also witnessed a renaissance of creativity in the postcolonial world as modern writers embrace their heritage. The experience of postcoloniality has also drawn the attention of academics from various disciplines and has given rise to a growing body of scholarship. This reference work overviews the present state of postcolonial studies and offers a refreshingly polyphonic treatment of the effects of globalization on literary studies in the 21st century. The volume includes more than 150 alphabetically arranged entries on postcolonial studies around the world. Entries on individual authors provide brief biographical details but primarily examine the author's handling of postcolonial themes. So too, entries on theoreticians offer background information and summarize the person's contributions to critical thought. Entries on national literatures explore the history of postcoloniality and the ways in which writers have broadly engaged their legacy, while those on important topics discuss the theoretical origin and current ramifications of key concepts in postcolonial studies. Cross-references and cited works for further reading are included, while a comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume.

Download or read book Colonialism Race and the French Romantic Imagination written by Pratima Prasad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how French Romanticism was shaped by and contributed to colonial discourses of race. It studies the ways in which metropolitan Romantic novels—that is, novels by French authors such as Victor Hugo, George Sand, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, François René de Chateaubriand, Claire de Duras, and Prosper Mérimée—comprehend and construct colonized peoples, fashion French identity in the context of colonialism, and record the encounter between Europeans and non-Europeans. While the primary texts that come under investigation in the book are novels, close attention is paid to Romantic fiction’s interdependence with naturalist treatises, travel writing, abolitionist texts, and ethnographies. Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination is one of the first books to carry out a sustained and comprehensive analysis of the French Romantic novel’s racial imagination that encompasses several sites of colonial contact: the Indian Ocean, North America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and France. Its archival research and interdisciplinary approach shed new light on canonical texts and expose the reader to non-canonical ones. The book will be useful to students and academics involved with Romanticism, colonial historians, students and scholars of transatlantic studies and postcolonial studies, as well as those interested in questions of race and colonialism.

Download or read book Ako Aya A Cameroorian Pioneer in Daring Journalism and Social Commentary written by Patrick Tataw Obenson and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrick Tataw Obenson, alias Ako-Aya, the rabid critic, social crusader and witty journalist, all rolled up in one, was indeed a popular and widely admired pioneer in daring journalism and social commentary in Cameroon. Little wonder that when he died, he left behind countless painful hearts and many questions on the lips of his admirers. As a man of the people, the fallen hero of Cameroon's Fleet Street shared his experiences, be they good or bad, with his readers. He was a virile critic even of the sordid things in which he himself secretly indulged. Obenson's mind was open, and through his popular newspaper column - Ako-Aya - he exposed society and social action in all their dimensions. He had an axe to grind with all perpetrators of social vices, especially those of them that infringed on the rights of the common man. He gave them a good fight, using his newspaper as his only weapon - a weapon which could not be neutralized even by the most affluent nor the most coercive leadership. And he did so with nerve and valour and venom. Only Tataw Obenson could spit out really scathing pieces of satire, aimed directly at the highest governing authorities of his society. Only Obenson could make allusions even to his own apparently ugly self. Only he could be liberal and honest enough to confess how he boarded a taxi and later bolted without paying the driver. Only Obenson was able to foresee his imminent demise from the face of the earth and literarily wrote his own epitaphÖ

Download or read book Challenge of Culture in Africa written by N. Fonlon and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was first published as a two-part essay in 1965 and 1967 in ABBIA Cameroon Cultural Review under the title Idea of Culture. Its main argument is that indigenous Africans cultures must be the foundation on which the modern African cultural structure should be raised; the soil into which the new seed should be sown; the stem into which the new scion should be grafted; the sap that should enliven the entire organism. This culture, the object of imperialist mockery and rejected, needs rehabilitation. However, such rehabilitation of African culture cannot be a mere archaeological enterprise. It will not answer to dig up the past and live it as it was. Not only is African culture not without its imperfections, times change and African culture must adapt itself, at every turn, to the changing times. In restoring African culture, it is imperative to steer clear of two extremes: on the one hand, the imperialist arrogance which declared everything African as only fit for the scrap-heap and the dust-bin, and, on the other hand, the overly enthusiastic and rather naive tendency to laud every aspect of African culture as if it were the quintessence of human achievement.

Download or read book What a Next of Kin written by Alobwed'Epie Alobwed'Epie and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This psycho-anthropological and socio-cultural novel logically and succinctly x-rays the foundations and raison d'tre of patriarchy through the implied questions - Is wealth the basis of patriarchy? Have women any role in the system? And how far can a patriarch protect his lineage from alien blood? The extremely wealthy father of eight daughters protagonist Ndi, says yes, to the first question; no, to the second; and in the third questions he says, through dogged pursuance of looking for a male heir by any means; but his lone son whom he unknowingly begot in a remote village in his early life and whom he accidentally stumbled upon and adopted as his heir in his odyssey of looking for a male heir through a series of marriages, says no, to the first question; yes, to the second and to the third question, he says fate is the umpire; and succeeds in convincing his father that he is right.

Download or read book The Earth in Peril written by Colin Diyen Ayeah and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colin Diyen's imaginary world of Mungongoh is an interesting one. There is the wrathful King Awobua whose lust for the earth is immeasurable. He intends to use the Institute of Research for the Development of Ideas (IRDI) where all the top brains in Mungongoh are concentrated to accomplish his wish of conquering the earth. This institution had surfaced with various diabolic ideas, hideous enough to make Lucifer jealous, but which apart from causing much sorrow on earth had never actually proved efficient enough to rid the earth of all mankind. The last great idea developed by the IRDI was a massive offensive against the earth, and this involved the use of every pestilence available and the neutron bomb. The book brings out strong positive points about the earth, as well as many negative aspects that if not corrected fast may take the earth down the drain.

Download or read book French Prose in 2000 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French Prose in 2000 stems in some important measure from work presented in September 1998 at the International Colloquium on French and Francophone Literature in the 1990’s held at Dalhousie University. A good number of papers given at that time, and since revisited in the light of exchanges, join here certain others specifically written for the purposes of this book. Together they constitute a wide-ranging and modally varied interrogation of the current state of French and francophone prose writing, its multifaceted manners, its richly divergent fascinations, its many theoretical or philosophical groundings. The book thus ceaselessly moves its attention from fictional biography to the roman noir, from the writing of Glissant and Chamoiseau to that of the étonnants voyageurs, from the powerful discourse of women such as Chawaf or Condé, Ernaux or Germain, Sallenave or Kristeva, to that of writers as diverse in their modes as Le Clézio and Quignard, Duras and Renaud Camus. All chapters focus, however, in near-exclusive measure, on the prose production of the last ten or twelve years.

Download or read book French Twentieth Bibliography written by Douglas W. Alden and published by Susquehanna University Press. This book was released on 1994-10 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series of bibliographical references is one of the most important tools for research in modern and contemporary French literature. No other bibliography represents the scholarly activities and publications of these fields as completely.

Download or read book The Crabs of Bangui written by Linus Tongwo Asong and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every man lives for himself, using his freedoms to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can at any moment perform or not perform this or that action. The higher a man stands in the social scale, the more connections he has with others and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the predestination and inevitability of every act he commits. Upon this philosophy, a former banker, Hansel Bolingo, suddenly finds [or makes] himself the regional representative of a Chinese firm that deals in crabs in Bangui. This catapults him into a position of instant wealth. His mouth-watering affluence draws immediate attention while his hypnotic powers cause hundreds of [not-so-honest]citizens to clamour for shares from which he builds up a huge fortune. But he soon discovers that he cannot deceive everybody all the time.

Download or read book A Handbook of African Affairs written by Helen A. Kitchen and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Zintgraffs Explorations in Bamenda Adamawa and the Benue Lands 18891892 written by E.M. Chilver and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010-08-30 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961, contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen Zintgraffs book NORD-KAMERUN (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial Bamenda and Wum Division. Zintgraffs book, the first by a European about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne in mind: Zintgraffs knowledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the book to justify his own actions and to support that small but influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of Zintgraffs opponents in the Kamerun Government and in the Colonial Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in Rudins GERMANS IN THE CAMEROONS and others referred to in these notes. What is perhaps most striking about Zintgraffs account is the fact that the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over long distances. These links must be set beside the insecurity due to raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.

Download or read book This Africa written by Judith Illsley Gleason and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arranged under five basic headings, this book is a critical analysis of West African literature. With textual commentary and summary notes, author annotates, criticizes, and summarizes using excerpts from the various novels.

Download or read book Subversive Traditions written by Jonathon Repinecz and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can traditions be subversive? The kinship between African traditions and novels has been under debate for the better part of a century, but the conversation has stagnated because of a slowness to question the terms on which it is based: orality vs. writing, tradition vs. modernity, epic vs. novel. These rigid binaries were, in fact, invented by colonialism and cemented by postcolonial identity politics. Thanks to this entrenched paradigm, far too much ink has been poured into the so-called Great Divide between oral and writing societies, and to the long-lamented decline of the ways of old. Given advances in social science and humanities research—studies in folklore, performance, invented traditions, colonial and postcolonial ethnography, history, and pop culture—the moment is right to rewrite this calcified literary history. This book is not another story of subverted traditions, but of subversive ones. West African epics like Sunjata, Samori, and Lat-Dior offer a space from which to think about, and criticize, the issues of today, just as novels in European languages do. Through readings of documented performances and major writers like Yambo Ouologuem and Amadou Hampâté Bâ of Mali, Ahmadou Kourouma of Ivory Coast, and Aminata Sow Fall and Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal, this book conducts an entirely new analysis of West African oral epic and its relevance to contemporary world literature.

Download or read book Literature and Politics Today written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the intersection of literature and politics since the beginning of the 20th century, this book examines authors, historical figures, major literary and political works, national literatures, and literary movements to reveal the intrinsic links between literature and history. Literary works have often engaged political issues, and many political writings give close attention to literary concerns. This encyclopedia explores the complex relationship between literature and politics through detailed entries written by expert contributors on authors, historical figures, major literary and political works, national literatures, and literary movements, covering specific themes, concepts, and genres related to literature and politics from the 20th century to the present. The work covers cover authors that include Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Philip K. Dick, W.E.B. Du Bois, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Toni Morrison, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, and Virginia Woolf, just to mention a few. International in scope, Literature and Politics Today: The Political Nature of Modern Fiction, Poetry, and Drama covers writing ranging from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, with special emphasis on works written in English. The content of the some 150 alphabetically arranged entries is ideal for high school students working on assignments involving literature to explore such current yet historically ongoing social issues as censorship and propaganda. This book is appropriate for public libraries where it will serve to support student research and to help general readers learn more about enduring political concerns through literary works. Academic libraries will find this reference a valuable guide for undergraduates studying literature, history, political science, law, and other disciplines.