Africa's unwritten literatures

Africa's unwritten literatures
Author: Ruth Finnegan
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 722
Release: 2014-08-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1291990593

The latest edition of the acclaimed classic on an increasingly important continent

Oral Literature in Africa

Oral Literature in Africa
Author: Ruth Finnegan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2012-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1906924708

Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Thin Blue

Thin Blue
Author: Jonny Steinberg
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2010-11-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1868424111

A country is policed only to the extent that it consents to be. When that consent is withheld, cops either negotiate or withdraw. Once they do this, however, they are no longer police; their role becomes something far murkier. Several months before they exploded into xenophobic violence, Jonny Steinberg travelled the streets of Alexandra, Reiger Park and other Johannesburg townships with police patrols. His mission was to discover the unwritten rules of engagement emerging between South Africa's citizens and its new police force. In this provocative new book, Steinberg argues that policing in crowded urban space is like theatre. Only here, the audience writes the script, and if the police don't perform the right lines, the spectators throw them off the stage. In vivid and eloquent prose, Steinberg takes us into the heart of this drama, and picks apart the rules South Africans have established for the policing of their communities. What emerges is a lucid and original account of a much larger matter: the relationship between ordinary South Africans and the government they have elected to rule them. The government and its people are like scorned lovers, Steinberg argues: their relationship, brittle, moody, untrusting and ultimately very needy.

Let's Tell This Story Properly

Let's Tell This Story Properly
Author: Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2015-05-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1459730577

Honouring strong new voices from around the world, the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is a global award, open to unpublished as well as published writers, with a truly international judging panel. This global anthology presents the winner of the 2014 Short Story Prize, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s “Let’s Tell This Story Properly,” alongside some of the most promising and original stories entered for the prize during the past three years by emerging writers across the literary landscape of the world. Gathered from over ten thousand entries, the selected stories are provocative, rich in flair and ambition, and push the boundaries of fiction into fresh territory.

Literatures in African Languages

Literatures in African Languages
Author: B. W. Andrzejewski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 678
Release: 1985-11-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521256461

Although African literatures in English and French are widely known outside Africa, those in the African languages themselves have not received comparable attention. In this book a number have been selected for survey by fourteen specialist writers, providing the reader with an introduction to this very wide field and a body of reference material which includes extensive bibliographies and biographical information on African authors. Theoretical issues such as genre divisions are discussed in the essays and the historical, social and political forces at work in the creation and reception of African literature are examined. Literature is treated as an art whose medium is language, so that both the oral and written forms are encompassed. This book will be of value not only to readers concerned with the cultures of Africa but to all those with an interest in the literary phenomena of the world in general.

African Oral Literature

African Oral Literature
Author: Howard James Jordan
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
Total Pages: 723
Release: 2024-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN:

African Oral Literature: Its Philosophical Thoughts Conveyed in Yuruba Society explores the ways that the Yoruba people of Nigeria have made remarkable contributions to the world’s civilization. Yoruba philosophical, religious tenets, artistic tenets, ideas, and icons have helped to transform religious beliefs and practices and the arts. When considering the study of Yoruba oral traditions, one learns how its philosophical concepts are the bases for an interpretation of what constitutes their aesthetic performance in art forms. This book introduces distinguished Yoruba cultural historians documenting the full spectrum, which extends beyond the visual art form. Through oral tradition, the effigy with its ako naturalism is not judged for its photographic realism, but for its efficacy within the context of the ako traditional ceremony, which is intended to make the end of this life and the beginning of the next one honorable and dignifying for one's parents where good will is needed by those still on earth. About the Author Howard James Jordan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1948. He is a lifetime member of the following associations: The Buffalo Soldiers, 24th Infantry Regiment of New Jersey; The Buffalo Soldiers 9th & 10th Horse Cavalry Association of Baltimore, MD and Los Angeles, CA; Disabled American Veterans (DVA) and Veterans of Foreign Wars, Dept. of New Jersey. Howard’s hobbies include writing, reading history, dancing, roller skating, horseback riding, traveling, wood carving, and painting. He also taught art in Nigeria Secondary Schools, was a research assistant at Nigerian University, and taught special education in Philadelphia Public Schools.

Written/Unwritten

Written/Unwritten
Author: Patricia A. Matthew
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2016-10-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1469627728

The academy may claim to seek and value diversity in its professoriate, but reports from faculty of color around the country make clear that departments and administrators discriminate in ways that range from unintentional to malignant. Stories abound of scholars--despite impressive records of publication, excellent teaching evaluations, and exemplary service to their universities--struggling on the tenure track. These stories, however, are rarely shared for public consumption. Written/Unwritten reveals that faculty of color often face two sets of rules when applying for reappointment, tenure, and promotion: those made explicit in handbooks and faculty orientations or determined by union contracts and those that operate beneath the surface. It is this second, unwritten set of rules that disproportionally affects faculty who are hired to "diversify" academic departments and then expected to meet ever-shifting requirements set by tenured colleagues and administrators. Patricia A. Matthew and her contributors reveal how these implicit processes undermine the quality of research and teaching in American colleges and universities. They also show what is possible when universities persist in their efforts to create a diverse and more equitable professorate. These narratives hold the academy accountable while providing a pragmatic view about how it might improve itself and how that improvement can extend to academic culture at large. The contributors and interviewees are Ariana E. Alexander, Marlon M. Bailey, Houston A. Baker Jr., Dionne Bensonsmith, Leslie Bow, Angie Chabram, Andreana Clay, Jane Chin Davidson, April L. Few-Demo, Eric Anthony Grollman, Carmen V. Harris, Rashida L. Harrison, Ayanna Jackson-Fowler, Roshanak Kheshti, Patricia A. Matthew, Fred Piercy, Deepa S. Reddy, Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez, Wilson Santos, Sarita Echavez See, Andrew J. Stremmel, Cheryl A. Wall, E. Frances White, Jennifer D. Williams, and Doctoral Candidate X.

You Will Be Safe Here

You Will Be Safe Here
Author: Damian Barr
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635573521

Shortlisted for the Saltire Society Literary Awards Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR An extraordinary debut that explores legacies of abuse, redemption, and the strength of the human spirit--from the Boer Wars in South Africa to brutal wilderness camps for teenage boys. South Africa, 1901. It is the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm. As the polite invaders welcome them to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp they promise Sarah and Fred that they will be safe there. 2014. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider. Hoping he will become the man she wants him to be, his Ma and her boyfriend force Willem to attend the New Dawn Safari Training Camp where they are proud to make men out of boys. They promise that he will be safe there. You Will Be Safe Here is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories. Inspired by real events, it uncovers a hidden colonial history, reveals a dark contemporary secret, and explores the legacy of violence and our will to survive.

Maggie & Me

Maggie & Me
Author: Damian Barr
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1408838087

A unique, tender and witty memoir of surviving the tough streets of small town Scotland during the Margaret Thatcher years ________________________ 'Shocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and sorrow' Independent on Sunday 'A work of stealthy genius' Maggie O'Farrell 'Certain memoirs catch a moment and seem to define it, bottle it ... hugely entertaining' Sunday Times It's 12 October 1984. An IRA bomb blows apart the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Miraculously, Margaret Thatcher survives. In small-town Scotland, eight-year-old Damian Barr watches in horror as his mum rips her wedding ring off and packs their bags. He knows he, too, must survive. Damian, his sister and his Catholic mum move in with her sinister new boyfriend while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous Mary the Canary. Divided by sectarian suspicion, the community is held together by the sprawling Ravenscraig Steelworks. But darkness threatens as Maggie takes hold: she snatches school milk, smashes the unions and makes greed good. Following Maggie's advice, Damian works hard and plans his escape. He discovers that stories can save your life and - in spite of violence, strikes, AIDS and Clause 28 - manages to fall in love dancing to Madonna in Glasgow's only gay club. Maggie & Me is a touching and darkly witty memoir about surviving Thatcher's Britain; a story of growing up gay in a straight world and coming out the other side in spite of, and maybe because of, the iron lady. Damian Barr's critically acclaimed debut novel, YOU WILL BE SAFE HERE, also available now.

African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity

African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity
Author: Samba Camara
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2024-01-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527559009

This book offers a fresh look into the “languages of postcolonial modernity” in Africa and, to a lesser degree, its diaspora. It foregrounds the notion of postcolonial modernity in reference to modernization as experienced in the postcolony and its contemporary legacies, and investigates how African languages and literatures, both as means of communication and as instruments of cultural agency, have embodied and mediated modernity. Each chapter grapples with the literary or linguistic dimensions of postcolonial modernity as portrayed in African novels, film, poetry or popular music or as embodied in African and Afro-diasporic languages and dialects. The chapters also reveal how literature and language, respectively, document and embody discourses, phenomena, histories, ideologies, and beliefs that resulted from the legacies of colonialism.