Download or read book Visions of Womanhood in Contemporary African Literature written by Blessing Diala-Ogamba and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an analysis of historical and contemporary literature, Visions of Womanhood in Contemporary African Literature argues that African women were not relegated to the background in African society until after colonization. Blessing Diala-Ogamba analyzes the history of women’s roles in African society through oral stories and biographies to show how colonialization worked to oppress women in Africa and explores the ways contemporary African literature confronts and works to overcome its colonial past. Using works by authors such as Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo, Lilian Masitera, Nawal El Sadaawi, Lauretta Ncgobo, Sembene Ousmane, and many others, Diala-Ogamba reveals the consistent progression of women and their roles in African novels and society.
Download or read book African Spirituality in Black Women s Fiction written by Elizabeth J. West and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-12 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being is the nexus to scholarship on manifestations of Africanisms in black art and culture, particularly the scant critical works focusing on African metaphysical retentions. This study examines New World African spirituality as a syncretic dynamic of spiritual retentions and transformations that have played prominently in the literary imagination of black women writers. Beginning with the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction traces applications and transformations of African spirituality in black women's writings that culminate in the conscious and deliberate celebration of Africanity in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The journey from Wheatley's veiled remembrances to Hurston's explicit gaze of continental Africa represents the literary journey of black women writers to represent Africa as not only a very real creative resource but also a liberating one. Hurston's icon of black female autonomy and self realization is woven from the thread work of African spiritual principles that date back to early black women's writings.
Download or read book Sturdy Black Bridges written by Roseann P. Bell and published by Anchor Books. This book was released on 1979 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Black Women Playwrights written by Carol P. Marsh-Lockett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of critical essays on plays by African American female playwrights from the post-reconstruction period to the present provides thematic analyses of plays by major and less widely known African American women playwrights The contributors examine the plays as vehicles of public discourse, and as explorations of issues of African American identity. Essays explore the themes of sexuality, agency, anger, and self-concept in the plays of African American Women.
Download or read book Legacies of Departed African Women Writers written by Helen O. Chukwuma and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legacies of Departed African Women Writers: Matrix of Creativity and Power proffers varied perspectives of the invaluable contributions of ten deceased African writers from all across Africa who have cleared the path to a vibrant African feminist arena. The dynamics of change gleaned from both their textual and contextual concerns unarguably set the pace for contemporary African women writers who have striven to follow in the footsteps of their literary mothers as well as their oral foremothers. This book, edited by Helen Chukwuma and Chioma Carol Opara, shows the collective testament of ample creativity and power generated by these departed heroes: Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Grace Ogot, Zulu Sofola, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Yvonne Vera, and Nadine Gordimer. These chapters revolve around the positive impact of the celebrated writers on creative writing, theoretical formulations, and socio-cultural change. The contributors argue that these corpuses of works have illuminated creativity rooted in power, vision, and freedom.
Download or read book Nobody s Magic written by Destiny O. Birdsong and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The magic here is not the supernatural kind, but rather an attention to the grace of the ordinary. It is the magic of watching these women come into their power.”—New York Times A GMA Buzz Pick! A Most Anticipated Book by Essence · The Millions · Atlantic Journal Constitution · Glamour · Teen Vogue · Bustle · BookPage · Nashville Scene · Ms. Magazine · Parnassus Musing A Best Book of February by Washington Post · Nylon · BookRiot In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. Suzette, a pampered twenty-year‑old, has been sheltered from the outside world since a dangerous childhood encounter. Now, a budding romance with a sweet mechanic allows Suzette to seek independence, which unleashes dark reactions in those closest to her. In discovering her autonomy, Suzette is forced to decide what she is willing to sacrifice in order to make her own way in the world. Maple is reeling from the unsolved murder of her free‑spirited mother. She flees the media circus and her judgmental grandmother by shutting herself off from the world in a spare room of the motel where she works. One night, at a party, Maple connects with Chad, someone who may understand her pain more than she realizes, and she discovers that the key to her mother's death may be within her reach. Agnes is far from home, working yet another mind‑numbing job. She attracts the interest of a lonely security guard and army veteran who’s looking for a traditional life for himself and his young son. He’s convinced that she wields a certain “magic,” but Agnes soon unleashes a power within herself that will shock them both and send her on a trip to confront not only her family and her past, but also herself. This novel, told in three parts, is a searing meditation on grief, female strength, and self‑discovery set against a backdrop of complicated social and racial histories. Nobody's Magic is a testament to the power of family—the ones you're born in and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.
Download or read book Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender written by Florence Stratton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.
Download or read book Holding the World Together written by Nwando Achebe and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring contributions from some of the most accomplished scholars on the topic, Holding the World Together explores the rich and varied ways in which women have wielded power across the African continent, from the precolonial period to the present. Suitable for classroom use, this comprehensive volume considers such topics as the representation of African women, their role in national liberation movements, their experiences of religious fundamentalism (both Christian and Muslim), their incorporation into the world economy, changing family and marriage systems, impacts of the world economy on their lives and livelihoods, and the unique challenges they face in the areas of health and disease. Contributors: Nwando Achebe, Ousseina Alidou, Signe Arnfred, Andrea L. Arrington-Sirois, Henryatta Ballah, Teresa Barnes, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Emily Burril, Abena P. A. Busia, Gracia Clark, Alicia Decker, Karen Flint, December Green, Cajetan Iheka, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth M. Perego, Claire Robertson, Kathleen Sheldon, Aili Mari Tripp, Cassandra Veney
Download or read book The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry written by Keith Clark and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his in-depth analysis of the works of Ann Petry (1908--1997), Keith Clark moves beyond assessments of Petry as a major mid-twentieth-century African American author and the sole female member of the "Wright School of Social Protest." He focuses on her innovative approaches to gender performance, sexuality, and literary technique. Engaging a variety of disciplinary frameworks, including gothic criticism, masculinity and gender studies, queer theory, and psychoanalytic theory, Clark offers fresh readings of Petry's three novels and collection of short stories. He explores, for example, Petry's use of terror in The Street, where both blacks and whites appear physically and psychically monstrous. He identifies the use of dark comedy and the macabre in the stories "The Bones of Louella Brown" and "The Witness." Petry's overlooked second novel, Country Place -- set in a deceptively serene Connecticut hamlet -- camouflages a world as nightmarish as the Harlem of her previous work. While confirming the black feminist dimensions of Petry's writing, Clark also assesses the writer's representations of an array of black and white masculine behaviors -- some socially sanctioned, others taboo -- in her unheralded masterpiece The Narrows and her widely anthologized short story "Like a Winding Sheet." Expansive in scope, The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry analyzes Petry's unique concerns and agile techniques, situating her among more celebrated male contemporary writers.
Download or read book Developing Global Leaders written by Eva Jordans and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-27 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a timely guide on what constitutes effective leadership in Africa. It explores how today’s leaders in Africa perceive their role, the challenges they experience, and how they operate effectively as leaders. In the era of globalization, there is an increasing need to offer guidance on how leaders can adjust their leadership style to suit situational contexts. Drawing on case study and survey data, this book illustrates to scholars and leaders worldwide the vision of leadership that is emerging in Africa. It will contribute to the development of a new community of global leaders, integrating cutting-edge knowledge on leadership development in Africa.
Download or read book Consuming Visions written by Maite Conde and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consuming Visions explores the relationship between cinema and writing in early twentieth-century Brazil, focusing on how the new and foreign medium of film was consumed by a literary society in the throes of modernization. Maite Conde places this relationship in the specific context of turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, which underwent a radical transformation to a modern global city, becoming a concrete symbol of the country's broader processes of change and modernization. Analyzing an array of literary texts, from journalistic essays and popular women's novels to anarchist treatises and vaudeville plays, the author shows how the writers' encounters with the cinema were consistent with the significant changes taking place in the city. The arrival and initial development of the cinema in Brazil were part of the new urban landscape in which early Brazilian movies not only articulated the processes of the city's modernization but also enabled new urban spectators--women, immigrants, a new working class, and a recently liberated slave population--to see, believe in, and participate in its future. In the process, these early movies challenged the power of the written word and of Brazilian writers, threatening the hegemonic function of writing that had traditionally forged the contours of the nation's cultural life. An emerging market of consumers of the new cultural phenomena--popular theater, the department store, the factory, illustrated magazines--reflected changes that not only modernized literary production but also altered the very life and everyday urban experiences of the population. Consuming Visions is an ambitious and engaging examination of the ways in which mass culture can become an agent of intellectual and aesthetic transformation.
Download or read book Black Visions written by Michael C. Dawson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive analysis of the complex relationship of black political thought identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion.
Download or read book Toni Morrison s Spiritual Vision written by Nadra Nittle and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision unpacks an oft-ignored but essential element of her work--her religion--and in so doing gives readers a deeper, richer understanding of her life and her writing. Nadra Nittle's wide-ranging, deep exploration of Morrison's oeuvre reveals the role of religion and spirituality in her life and literature.
Download or read book African Mythology Femininity and Maternity written by Ismahan Soukeyna Diop and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-08-24 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores feminine archetypes and mythological figures in African and European traditions with an underlying goal of describing the foundations of social status for women. The author provides a rich corpus of mythology and tales to illustrate aspects of female and mother-daughter relationships. Diop analyzes the symbolic aspects of maternity and femininity, describing the social meaning of the matrix, breasts, and breastfeeding. A retrospective of female characters in African literature brings an interesting approach to explore the figures of femininity and maternity in society. After an extensive analysis of African mythology and tales, the author proposes a way to integrate them in the clinical psychotherapy as a projective material. The analysis of clinical cases offers an example of how this material can be used in therapy with women from African descent.
Download or read book Chinua Achebe and the Igbo African World written by Chima J. Korieh and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how Chinua Achebe presented the Igbo-African world in his writing by analyzing his engagement with critical issues like historical representation, gender, and indigenous political institutions. Contributors study how his work draws from African historical reality and identity while challenging Western epistemological hegemony.
Download or read book Women Literature and Development in Africa written by Anthonia C. Kalu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a powerful exploration of the role of women in the evolution of African thinking and narratives on development, from the precolonial period right through to the modern day. Whilst the book identifies women’s oppression and marginalization as significant challenges to contemporary Africa’s advancement, it also explores how new written narratives draw on traditional African knowledge systems to bring deep-rooted and sometimes radical approaches to progress. The book asserts that Africans must tell their own stories, expressed through the complex meanings and nuances of African languages and often conveyed through oral traditions and storytelling, in which women play an important role. The book’s close examination of language and meaning in the African narrative tradition advances the illumination and elevation of African storytelling as part of a viable and valid knowledge base in its own right, rather than as an extension of European paradigms and methods. Anthonia C. Kalu's new edition of this important book, fully revised throughout, will also include fresh analysis of the role of digital media, education, and religion in African narratives. At a time when the prominence and participation of African women in development and sociopolitical debates is growing, this book's exploration of their lived experiences and narrative contribution will be of interest to students of African literature, gender studies, development, history, and sociology.
Download or read book Talking Visions written by Ella Shohat and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multivoiced collection of essays and images presents a "relational" feminism of diverse communities, affiliations, and practices.
