The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000

The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000

Author: Leila Kamali

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-10

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1137581719

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This book offers a new approach to reading the cultural memory of Africa in African American fiction from the post-Civil Rights era and in Black British fiction emerging in the wake of Thatcherism. The critical period between the decline of the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a deep contrast in the distinctive narrative approaches displayed by diverse African diaspora literatures in negotiating the crisis of representing the past. Through a series of close readings of literary fiction, this work examines how the cultural memory of Africa is employed in diverse and specific negotiations of narrative time, in order to engage and shape contemporary identity and citizenship. By addressing the practice of “remembering” Africa, the book argues for the signal importance of the African diaspora’s literary interventions, and locates new paradigms for cultural identity in contemporary times.


Post-Colonial and African American Women's Writing

Post-Colonial and African American Women's Writing

Author: Gina Wisker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-03-04

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0333985249

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This accessible and unusually wide-ranging book is essential reading for anyone interested in postcolonial and African American women's writing. It provides a valuable gender and culture inflected critical introduction to well established women writers: Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Suniti Namjoshi, Bessie Head, and others from the U.S.A., India, Africa, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and introduces emergent writers from South East Asia, Cyprus and Oceania. Engaging with and clarifying contested critical areas of feminism and the postcolonial; exploring historical background and cultural context, economic, political, and psychoanalytic influences on gendered experience, it provides a cohesive discussion of key issues such as cultural and gendered identity, motherhood, mothertongue, language, relationships, women's economic constraints and sexual politics.


Granada

Granada

Author: Radwa Ashour

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2003-10-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780815607656

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Radwa Ashour skillfully weaves a history of Granadan rule and an Arabic world into a novel that evokes cultural loss and the disappearance of a vanquished population. The novel follows the family of Abu Jaafar the bookbinder—his wife, widowed daughter-in-law, her two children, and his two apprentices—as they witness Christopher Columbus and his entourage in a triumphant parade featuring exotic plants, animals, human captives from the New World. Embedded in the narrative is the preparation for the marriage of Saad, one of the apprentices, and Saleema, Abu Jaafar's granddaughter—which is elegantly revealed in a number of parallel scenes. As the new rulers of Granada confiscate books and officials burn the collected volumes, Abu Jaafur quietly moves his rich library out of town. Persecuted Muslims fight to form an independent government, but increasing economic and cultural pressures on the Arabs of Spain and Christian rulers culminate in forcing Christian conversions and Muslim uprisings. A tale that is both vigorous and heartbreaking, this novel will appeal to general readers of Spanish and Arabic literature as well as anyone interested in Christian-Muslim relations.


Before Reading

Before Reading

Author: Peter J. Rabinowitz

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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How does what we know shape the ways we read? Starting from the premise that any productive theory of narrative must take into account the presuppositions the reader brings to the text, Before Reading explores how our prior knowledge of literary conventions influences the processes of interpretation and evaluation. Available again with a new introduction by James Phelan.


The African Imagination

The African Imagination

Author: Abiola Irele

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780195086195

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This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampat B , and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.


Constructing the Criollo Archive

Constructing the Criollo Archive

Author: Antony Higgins

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781557531988

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Focusing on a period neglected by scholars, Higgins reconstructs how during the colonial period criollos - individuals identified as being of Spanish descent born in America - elaborated a body of knowledge, an "archive," in order to establish their intellectual autonomy within the Spanish colonial administrative structures." "This book opens up an important area of research that will be of interest to scholars and students of Spanish American colonial literature and history."--BOOK JACKET.


The Poetics of Science Fiction

The Poetics of Science Fiction

Author: Peter Stockwell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1317878175

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The Poetics of Science Fiction uniquely uses the science of linguistics to explore the literary universe of science fiction. Developing arguments about specific texts and movements throughout the twentieth-century, the book is a readable discussion of this most popular of genres. It also uses the extreme conditions offered by science fiction to develop new insights into the language of the literary context. The discussion ranges from a detailed investigation of new words and metaphors, to the exploration of new worlds, from pulp science fiction to the genre's literary masterpieces, its special effects and poetic expression. Speculations and extrapolations throughout the book engage the reader in thought-experiments and discussion points, with selected further reading making it a useful source book for classroom and seminar.


William Golding's Lord of the Flies

William Golding's Lord of the Flies

Author: Harold Bloom

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 1438135394

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Discusses the writing of Lord of the flies by William Golding. Includes critical essays on the work and a brief biography of the author.


Women, Race, & Class

Women, Race, & Class

Author: Angela Y. Davis

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-06-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0307798496

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From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.