Download or read book At Night All Blood Is Black written by David Diop and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
Download or read book The Abandoned Baobab written by Ken Bugul and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its unflinching look at our darkest impulses, and at the stark facts of being a colonized African, the book is ultimately inspirational, for it exposes us to a remarkable sensibility and a hard-won understanding of one's place in the world.CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French
Download or read book So Long a Letter written by Mariama Bâ and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2012-05-06 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Considered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Download or read book The Tongue Tied Imagination written by Tobias Warner and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.
Download or read book Faith in Empire written by Elizabeth A. Foster and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-20 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith in Empire is an innovative exploration of French colonial rule in West Africa, conducted through the prism of religion and religious policy. Elizabeth Foster examines the relationships among French Catholic missionaries, colonial administrators, and Muslim, animist, and Christian Africans in colonial Senegal between 1880 and 1940. In doing so she illuminates the nature of the relationship between the French Third Republic and its colonies, reveals competing French visions of how to approach Africans, and demonstrates how disparate groups of French and African actors, many of whom were unconnected with the colonial state, shaped French colonial rule. Among other topics, the book provides historical perspective on current French controversies over the place of Islam in the Fifth Republic by exploring how Third Republic officials wrestled with whether to apply the legal separation of church and state to West African Muslims.
Download or read book The Limits of the Literary written by Tobias Dodge Warner and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation argues that the category of the literary emerged in colonial Senegal through the exclusion of some indigenous textual cultures and the translation of others. In readings of Mariama Bâ, Ousmane Sembène, Cheikh Aliou Ndao, Maam Yunus Dieng and others, I examine how postcolonial Senegalese authors working in French and Wolof have responded to this legacy. Through analyses of a variety of 19th-20th century texts, this dissertation explores how the Senegalese literary field has been crosscut by a series of struggles over how to define proper reading and authorship, and what the shape of a future literary public might be. I argue that Senegalese writers working at the interstices of French and Wolof have engaged with a variety of crises of authorship and audience by addressing their work to a public that is yet to come. The dissertation begins in the 19th century with a reading of works by an influential 19th-century métis intellectual, the Abbé David Boilat, in whose scholarly activities one can perceive the discursive preconditions of a future francophone literary field. From there, the dissertation turns to the early 20th century, when literary studies were introduced into the French colonial curriculum as a discipline for cultivating new and putatively modern modes of authorship and reading. The focus then shifts to the 1960s-70s, where I explore the postcolonial politics of language and the emergence of modern Wolof literature and film in Cheikh Aliou Ndao's Buur Tilleen (1967) and Ousmane Sembène's Mandabi (1968). I then investigate how the circulation of Senegalese literature as World literature echoes the ideals of colonial literary study. Here, I reconsider the reception history of Mariama Bâ's Une si longue lettre (1980), contrasting the terms in which that novel became internationally acclaimed with how it has been reworked by a Wolof writer, Maam Yunus Dieng. Finally, in a Coda, I query how the ẁork' of Wolof literature has been transformed in the age of structural adjustment - through readings of Boubacar Boris Diop's Doomi Golo (2003) and Cheikh Aliou Ndao's Mbaam Aakimoo (1997).
Download or read book Doomi Golo The Hidden Notebooks written by Boubacar Boris Diop and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel to be translated from Wolof to English, Doomi Golo—The Hidden Notebooks is a masterful work that conveys the story of Nguirane Faye and his attempts to communicate with his grandson before he dies. With a narrative structure that beautifully imitates the movements of a musical piece, Diop relates Faye’s trauma of losing his only son, Assane Tall, which is compounded by his grandson Badou’s migration to an unknown destination. While Faye feels certain that his grandson will return one day, he also is convinced that he will no longer be alive by then. Faye spends his days sitting under a mango tree in the courtyard of his home, reminiscing and observing his surroundings. He speaks to Badou through his seven notebooks, six of which are revealed to the reader, while the seventh, the “Book of Secrets,” is highly confidential and reserved for Badou’s eyes only. In the absence of letters from Badou, the notebooks form the only possible means of communication between the two, carrying within them tunes and repetitions that give this novel its unusual shape: loose and meandering on the one hand, coherent and tightly interwoven on the other. Translated by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop.
Download or read book Black French and African written by Janet G. Vaillant and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography in English of this prizewinning poet, politician, and intellectual. Senghor, the first African to be elected to the Academie Francaise for his contributions to French culture was also the first president of independent Senegal from 1961-1980, and a leader of West African Independence. Examined are the links between his personal experience, his political work, and his poetry, and the effects of his political ideology on state building. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Download or read book Ambiguous Adventure written by Hamidou Kane and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1972 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sambo Diallo is unable to identify with the soulless material civilization he finds in France, where he is sent to learn the secrets of the white man's power.
Download or read book Ghost Letters written by Baba Badji and published by Parlor Press LLC. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ghost Letters, one emigrates to America again, and again, and again, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one grows up in America, and attends university in America, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one wrestles with one’s American blackness in ways not possible in Senegal, though one never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; and one sees more deeply into Americanness than any native-born American could. Ghost Letters is a 21st century Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, though it is a notebook of arrival and being in America. It is a major achievement. —Shane McCrae
Download or read book Introduction to Francophone African Literature written by Olusola Oke and published by Spectrum Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first title of a new African literature series, this is a lively, accomplished collection of essays about modern African literature in French. It aims to address the need - of both the anglophone African and the non-African reader - for literary criticism of francophone literature in English, and thus bridge a prevailing, prohibitive lanaguage and cultural barrier. The collection covers a comprehensive range of genres - from the epic traditon and oral literature, to poetry and the modern novel. Its contributors are all specialists in French literature and African literature in French, and include for example the prominent Nigerian critic of feminist literature and feminism, Adule Adebayo. Subjects include: negritude poetry as a process of protest, revolt and reconciliation; the biographies and autobiographical novels of women writers and their comparative late arrival on the literary scene; and perspectives on the debate surrounding the tradition and status of the African novel.
Download or read book The Concept of Negritude in the Poetry of Leopold Sedar Senghor written by Sylvia Washington Ba and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Negritude has been defined by Léopold Sédar Senghor as "the sum of the cultural values of the black world as they are expressed in the life, the institutions, and the works of black men." Sylvia Washington Bâ analyzes Senghor's poetry to show how the concept of negritude infuses it at every level. A biographical sketch describes his childhood in Senegal, his distinguished academic career in France, and his election as President of Senegal. Themes of alienation and exile pervade Senghor's poetry, but it was by the opposition of his sensitivity and values to those of Europe that he was able to formulate his credo. Its key theme, and the supreme value of black African civilization, is the concept of life forces, which are not attributes or accidents of being, but the very essence of being. Life is an essentially dynamic mode of being for the black African, and it has been Senghor's achievement to communicate African intensity and vitality through his use of the nuances, subtleties, and sonorities of the French language. In the final chapter Sylvia Washington Bâ discusses the future of Senghor's belief that the black man's culture should be recognized as valid not simply as a matter of human justice, but because the values of negritude could be instrumental in the reintegration of positive values into western civilization and the reorientation of contemporary man toward life and love. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Tongue Tied Imagination written by Tobias Warner and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.
Download or read book Senegal written by Michael Crowder and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-07 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published as a revised edition in 1967, this book covers an aspect of Senegalese history of great importance not only for the student of French Colonial policy but also for those interested in the development of nationalism in French-speaking Africa. Senegal was the only French colony in Africa where any sustained attempt was made to implement the much-discussed policy of assimilation. In a concise and authoritative study, the author assesses the effects of this unique experiment in colonial rule and examines the reasons for its failure and repudiation by both France and Senegal, and the marks it left on the latter.
Download or read book White Society in Black Africa written by Rita Cruise O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Francophone African Poetry and Drama written by Richard J. Gray II and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars examining literature from former French colonies sometimes view it wrongly as simply an outgrowth of colonial literature. By suggesting new ways to understand the multiple voices present, this book explores how Francophone African poetry and theatre in particular, since the 1960s, constitute both an organic cultural product and a reflection of the diverse African cultures in which they originate. Themes explored in five chapters include the many kinds of African identity formation, the resistance to former notions of literary composition as art, a remapping of social responsibility, and the impact of globalization on Francophone Africa's participation in world economics, politics and culture. This study highlights the inner workings of Francophone African literature and suggests a canonization of modern Francophone works from a world perspective.
Download or read book The Politics of National Languages in Postcolonial Senegal written by Ibrahima Diallo and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Senegal claimed political independence from France in 1960, and Leopold Sedhar Senghor became Senegal's first president. Even though Senegal was no longer a French colony, Senghor was determined to maintain the dominance of French culture and language in his country. However, pressure to give national languages more power and space, which had already started during French occupation, continued intensely after independence. Senghor's political adversaries as well as teacher and student unions, workers, and various activist groups roundly criticized Senghor's government for the language and education programs he chose for the Senegalese people. The issue of national languages thus became a major political issue in Senegal with a far-reaching and longstanding impact. This book is a comprehensive study on the current language policies and practices in Senegal. It illuminates the tension that has arisen from the enduring colonial legacies and their influences in postcolonial language policies in Senegal. It also highlights the need for vigorous policy change to recognize the Senegalese languages, especially in education, and how the preservation of these languages is critical to identity and culture issues. The book shows that it is important for the Senegalese people to retain their original local languages and how French and English are not simply the only languages needed for Senegal's success in the globalized economy. In addition to a detailed history with supporting facts and figures, this study also links socioeconomic, cultural, and political events in its analysis of the unstoppable rise of Wolof, which is posing a significant threat to the already-fragile local linguistic ecology. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied and social linguistics, African studies, and policy studies.
