Brings together selections of ten outstanding South African poets, to show, in writing drawn from more than four decades, from very different cultures and traditions, a vital and diverse literature. Representing a vision of a pluralistic Africanism the anthology takes the poetry of the region away from the dichotomy which apartheid promoted.
ONE OF NPR'S GREAT READS OF 2014 A modern classic being introduced to the United States for the first time, Tatamkhulu Afrika's autobiographical novel illuminating the profound and incomparable bonds forged between prisoners of war. Bitter Eden is based on Tatamkhulu Afrika's own capture in North Africa and his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II in Italy and Germany. This frank and beautifully wrought novel deals with three men who must negotiate the emotions that are brought to the surface by the physical closeness of survival in the male-only camps. The complex rituals of camp life and the strange loyalties and deep bonds among the men are heartbreakingly depicted. Bitter Eden is a tender, bitter, deeply felt book of lives inexorably changed, and of a war whose ending does not bring peace.
Robert Pinsky and Derek Walcott anchor this groundbreaking, soulful poetry collection. Imagine a night of a hundred poets reading their work to an audience of intensely engaged, responsive, and lively people—say three thousand of them. They are a loud bunch when it is time to make noise, but they are silent as congregants at prayer when the poets’ language entrances them. Imagine the reading taking place under a tent pitched on a grassy lawn that overlooks the Caribbean Sea. Imagine that this is not the north coast of Jamaica, with its cliche of white sands and coconut trees, a place glutted with cruise ship passengers and bewildered tourists; imagine instead a rugged coastline, a landscape full of the kind of character we find in the weather-beaten faces of wise old folk; imagine fishermen, farmers, ordinary workers, schoolchildren, and traveling people moving around as if they have been in this place forever and as if they all belong . . . Imagine one hundred poets, some whose names you know and some you have never heard of, stepping onto the stage, opening their mouths and hearts, and singing out poems of great variety, complexity, beauty, and passion . . . Imagine laughter and tears, imagine sighs of familiarity and moans of pain, imagine tragedies enacted in the words that move through the shelter of the tent; imagine a poem like a fist, or a sharply painful open palm, or the tender caress of fingers, or the firm grasp of a handshake. Imagine stories dropping like seeds into the ground and growing rapidly and wildly all around you. This is the setting and mood of the greatest little festival in the greatest little village in the greatest little country in the world, and this anthology is what the festival would look like were all 100 poets who have read at Calabash over the years to come together on a late-May weekend to read. So Much Things to Say is a unique gathering of a group of poets who represent at least one reckoning of the place of contemporary poetry in 2010. Contributors include Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Martin Espada, Terrance Hayes, Valzyna Mort, Sonia Sanchez, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Staceyann Chin, and 88 others.
Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.
From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.
Since its publication in April 2017, Collective Amnesia has taken the South African literary scene by storm. The book is in its twelfth print run and is prescribed for study at tertiary level in South African Universities and abroad. The collection is the recipient of the 2018 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, named 2017 book of the year by the City Press and one of the best books of 2017 by The Sunday Times and Quartz Africa. It is translated into Spanish (Flores Rara, 2019), German (Wunderhorn Publishing House, 2019), Danish (Rebel with a Cause, 2019), Dutch (Poeziecentrum, 2020), Swedish (Rámus förlag). Forthcoming translations: Portuguese (Editora Trinta Zero Nove), Italian (Arcipelago itaca) and French (éditions Lanskine). Collective Amnesia examines the intersection of politics, race, religion, relationships, sexuality, feminism, memory and more. The poems provoke institutions and systems of learning and interrogates what must be unlearned in society, academia, relationships, religion, and spaces of memory and forgetting.
This edition is a re-release of Xaba’s first poetry collection (first published in 2005) due to demand from readers and academics. A powerful, ground breaking work that placed Xaba firmly as an important voice the SA literary scene. Words Whenever I take the pulse of my existence, feel the pinch of my persistence against the grinding grain of my resistance to the pounding punch of their insistence, words transmit to me a drumroll of deliverance.
The New Century of South African Poetry presents the challenges of a new millennium. From a 'post-apartheid' perspective, South Africa rejoins the world as it seeks a home. Simultaneously, it searches the past for a shared though diverse inheritance.