Rereading Camara Laye

Author : Adele King
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2002-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0803227523

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Rereading Camara Laye by Adele King Pdf

Camara Laye (1928?80) traveled to France from his native Guinea in 1947 on a scholarship to study automobile mechanics. While there, he was encouraged by a supporterøof the French Union to record the memories of his childhood. The resulting book, L'Enfant noir, was praised for its style and its uncritical attitude toward French colonization. A year later Laye published Le Regard du roi, a Kafkaesque story of a white man in Africa, which was very different in tone, style, and content from L'Enfant noir and from any other African literature being published at the time. L'Enfant noir and Le Regard du roi became seminal works of African fiction in French and were translated into English as The African Child and The Radiance of the King. Adele King met Camara Laye in 1978, two years before his death, and in 1980 published the principal study about him, The Writings of Camara Laye. In 1991 King set out to disprove rumors that Laye was not the author of one of his novels, Le Regard du roi. Instead she became convinced that the rumors were true and in the process unexpectedly discovered a far more interesting story about the creation of Laye as an author and public figure. Rereading Camara Laye describes King's research, which has taken more than ten years. Her inquiry involved finding those who knew Laye in Paris in the 1950s and interviewing them when possible as well as examining documents in libraries and archives in France and Belgium. King's findings provide important insights into French publishing and colonial politics in the years following World War II. She also shows how interpretations of Laye's novels have been shaped by the assumption that they were written by an African.

Author : Adele King
Publisher : London ; Ibadan [Nigeria] : Heinemann
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1980
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : STANFORD:36105038937244

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The Writings of Camara Laye by Adele King Pdf

Author : Kyle Wanberg
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781487506841

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Maps of Empire by Kyle Wanberg Pdf

Maps of Empire examines how literature was affected by the decay and break up of old models of imperial administration in the mid-twentieth century.

Author : Chantal J. Zabus
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 9781847010827

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Out in Africa by Chantal J. Zabus Pdf

Homosexuality was and still is thought to be quintessentially 'un-African'. Yet in this book Chantal Zabus examines the anthropological, cultural and literary representations of male and female same-sex desire from early colonial contacts between Europe and Africa in the nineteenth century to the present. Covering a broad geographical spectrum, from Mali to South Africa and from Senegal to Kenya, and adopting a comparative approach encompassing two colonial languages (English and French) and some African languages, 'Out in Africa' charts developments in Sub-Saharan African texts and contexts through the work of 7 colonial and some 25 postcolonial writers.

Author : Christopher L. Miller
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2018-12-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226591001

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Impostors by Christopher L. Miller Pdf

Writing a new page in the surprisingly long history of literary deceit, Impostors examines a series of literary hoaxes, deceptions that involved flagrant acts of cultural appropriation. This book looks at authors who posed as people they were not, in order to claim a different ethnic, class, or other identity. These writers were, in other words, literary usurpers and appropriators who trafficked in what Christopher L. Miller terms the “intercultural hoax.” In the United States, such hoaxes are familiar. Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree and JT LeRoy’s Sarah are two infamous examples. Miller’s contribution is to study hoaxes beyond our borders, employing a comparative framework and bringing French and African identity hoaxes into dialogue with some of their better-known American counterparts. In France, multiculturalism is generally eschewed in favor of universalism, and there should thus be no identities (in the American sense) to steal. However, as Miller demonstrates, this too is a ruse: French universalism can only go so far and do so much. There is plenty of otherness to appropriate. This French and Francophone tradition of imposture has never received the study it deserves. Taking a novel approach to this understudied tradition, Impostors examines hoaxes in both countries, finding similar practices of deception and questions of harm.

Author : Karen L. Taylor
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Electronic books
ISBN : 9780816074990

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The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel by Karen L. Taylor Pdf

French novels such as "Madame Bovary" and "The Stranger" are staples of high school and college literature courses. This work provides coverage of the French novel since its origins in the 16th century, with an emphasis on novels most commonly studied in high school and college courses in world literature and in French culture and civilization.

Author : Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong,Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 3382 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2012-02-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780195382075

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Dictionary of African Biography by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong,Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Pdf

From the Pharaohs to Fanon, Dictionary of African Biography provides a comprehensive overview of the lives of the men and women who shaped Africa's history. Unprecedented in scale, DAB covers the whole continent from Tunisia to South Africa, from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It also encompasses the full scope of history from Queen Hatsheput of Egypt (1490-1468 BC) and Hannibal, the military commander and strategist of Carthage (243-183 BC), to Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (1909-1972), Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (1918 -).

Author : Donald R. Wehrs
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0739116495

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Islam, Ethics, Revolt by Donald R. Wehrs Pdf

Rereading works by Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Rachid Boudjedra, Yambo Ouologuem, Ahmadou Kourouma, Mariama Bâ, and Assia Djebar, this study explores the struggle to craft decolonized Islamic identities within sub-Saharan and North African societies. Linking the politics of these narratives to an Islamic piety rooted in ethical revolt against egotism and idolatry, the study considers the agency of non-Western values in postcolonial literature and the relationship between novelistic and prophetic discursive authority.

Author : Roger Benjamin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2003-02-03
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780520924406

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Orientalist Aesthetics by Roger Benjamin Pdf

Lavishly illustrated with exotic images ranging from Renoir's forgotten Algerian oeuvre to the abstract vision of Matisse's Morocco and beyond, this book is the first history of Orientalist art during the period of high modernism. Roger Benjamin, drawing on a decade of research in untapped archives, introduces many unfamiliar paintings, posters, miniatures, and panoramas and discovers an art movement closely bound to French colonial expansion. Orientalist Aesthetics approaches the visual culture of exoticism by ranging across the decorative arts, colonial museums, traveling scholarships, and art criticism in the Salons of Paris and Algiers. Benjamin's rediscovery of the important Society of French Orientalist Painters provides a critical context for understanding a lush body of work, including that of indigenous Algerian artists never before discussed in English. The painter-critic Eugène Fromentin tackled the unfamiliar atmospheric conditions of the desert, Etienne Dinet sought a more truthful mode of ethnographic painting by converting to Islam, and Mohammed Racim melded the Persian miniature with Western perspective. Benjamin considers armchair Orientalists concocting dreams from studio bric-à-brac, naturalists who spent years living in the oases of the Sahara, and Fauve and Cubist travelers who transposed the discoveries of the Parisian Salons to create decors of indigenous figures and tropical plants. The network that linked these artists with writers and museum curators was influenced by a complex web of tourism, rapid travel across the Mediterranean, and the march of modernity into a colonized culture. Orientalist Aesthetics shows how colonial policy affected aesthetics, how Europeans visualized cultural difference, and how indigenous artists in turn manipulated Western visual languages.

Author : Adele King
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004-01-01
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0803227582

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From Africa by Adele King Pdf

Out of French-speaking Africa, from Togo, Chad, C–te d?Ivoire, Cameroon, Guinea, Congo, Rwanda, Djibouti, and Madagascar, comes the polyphony of newøvoices aired in this volume. The collection brings together fourteen important contemporary authors with roots in sub-Saharan French Africa and Madagascar, a new generation now living in France or the United States, and introduces their remarkable work to readers of English. These writers? stories, unlike earlier African literature, seldom resemble traditional folk tales. Instead they are concerned with the postindependence world and reveal in their rich and complex depths the influence of modern European and American short-story traditions as well as the enduring reach of African myths and legends. This gathering of gifted writers tenders modern versions of myths; nostalgia for childhood in Africa; relations between the sexes in contemporary Africa; continuing political problems; and the life of the African diaspora in France?all related in new and familiar ways, in innovative and traditional forms. Their work, most of it little known outside France and their native African countries, revises our understanding of the lingering effects of colonization even as it celebrates the complexity, exuberance, and tenacity of African culture.

Author : Mariama Bâ
Publisher : Waveland Press
Page : 113 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2012-05-06
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781478611233

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So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ Pdf

Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Considered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

Author : Camara Laye
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1954-01-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 080901548X

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The Dark Child by Camara Laye Pdf

The Dark Child is a distinct and graceful memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea. Long regarded Africa's preeminent Francophone novelist, Laye (1928-80) herein marvels over his mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood, which is marked by animistic beliefs and bloody rituals of primeval origin. Eventually, he must choose between this unique place and the academic success that lures him to distant cities. More than autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions struggling against the encroachment of a modern world. A passionate and deeply affecting record, The Dark Child is a classic of African literature.

Author : Jay Straker
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 9780253220592

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Youth, Nationalism, and the Guinean Revolution by Jay Straker Pdf

How youth-centered ambitions destroyed the ideals of nationhood in Guinea

Author : Bruce King
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 540 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2017-04-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9783838269566

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Interesting Life, So Far by Bruce King Pdf

Finally, Bruce King, acclaimed literary critic, presents his autobiography and offers fascinating insights into his life as bon vivant and literary critic.

Author : Tobias Warner
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780823284313

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The Tongue-Tied Imagination by Tobias Warner Pdf

Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.