In this richly researched and lucidly written collection of essays, ‘The Freedom of the Writer’ and Other Selected Literary and Cultural Essays, Ghirmai Negash provides solid analysis and information on some of the salient aspects of Eritrean literature and culture.
Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith’s Efúnsetán Aníwúrà, Ìyálóde Ibadan and Olú Æmæ (Tinuúbu), Ìyálóde Ëgbá, is an annotated English translation of Akínwùmí Ìsölá’s trailblazing dramas of two powerful, nineteenth century Ìyálóde during the seventy-year protracted internecine Yorùbá wars. Besides important male historical figures, change agents included a number of very distinguished women who have been written out of history, but whose trajectory, undoubtedly, did not stop with the nineteenth century...
In A Creole Experiment, Melanie Otto examines the utopian aspect of Brathwaite’s major “video-style” works while employing the concepts of Heimat (homeland) and “concrete utopia,” which were developed by philosopher Ernst Bloch in The Principle of Hope. She also focuses on Brathwaite’s interrogation and reinterpretation of the conventions of magical realism. Unlike mainstream Latin American magical realism, Brathwaite’s work is radical in both form and content, developing a distinctly creole aesthetic. In addition, Otto notes that Brathwaite’s vision of a “creole cosmos” does not refer to an ideal place. Instead, it reveals the tangibility of an often dismal day-to-day existence.
Negash’s continental and international visibility is very clear. He earned this through his monumental work, A History of Tigrinya Literature in Eritrea: The Oral and Written 1890-1991. In the sheer ambition of its historical sweep and the combination of Literature and Orature for its subject, it is groundbreaking while also making an important intellectual intervention in the study of African language literatures. Nothing of this magnitude has been accomplished with the same degree of unapologetic scholarly commitment and respect. In addition to establishing him as the leading scholar of Eritrean literature, it has paved the way for similar scholarship in Africa.
Set in Sierra Leone, West Africa, A Tale of Three Women is epic in scope, covering a span of about sixty years and touching upon the most important developments in that country’s recent history from about 1918 to the 1970s. It encompasses events such as the worldwide influenza epidemic, the Second World War, the preparation for independence, the achievement of independence, and the post-independence malaise. But all these serve only as a background against which Eustace Palmer deftly weaves the experiences of three very different women...
This volume represents a selection of 25 peer-reviewed papers from the 33rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) held in March 2002 at Ohio University in Athens. The papers cover language acquisition, syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, as well as language use and function in Africa making proposals concerning the proper analysis and representation of linguistic information.
This is the first book to offer a serious, balanced critical examination of Achebe's fiction. A provocative study of the rich and varied oeuvre of Africa's best known novelist, it redefines the concept of cultural nationalism to encompass issues covering political, social and other forms of behavior that shape and determining the manner in which the writer views himself and his world and it is written in a lively and lucid language that is immensely delightful to read.
Women character portraiture in Achebe’s novels has been seen from the widely explicit inferiority that marks her being. She is schooled from infancy to be docile and be satisfied with being voice-less even in matters that affect her or her children directly. The overall picture of women is one of weakness and self-effacement. This image stuck especially from the background of Achebe’s objective to present real heroes in the culture that is not what Josef Konrad depicted in Heart of Darkness. The story of Things Fall Apart is of Okonkwo and a society of men where women were relegated to the background of domesticity and motherhood and where if they offered any opposition however feeble, they were beaten to submission and silence. True but that did not reflect the whole story.
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