Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire articles from June 2003

Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire archives from June 2003

Editorial: bring Charles Taylor to face the UN Tribunal in Sierra Leone.
June 22, 2003... The departure of Charles Taylor from Monrovia was welcome news to many of us who were concerned about his repeated human rights violations in Liberia; his past support of the Sierra Leone rebels, the RUF, who were notorious for hacking off...

RWANDA: 1994: chronicle of a genocide foretold.
June 22, 2003... On April 6, 1994 at about 8:30 p.m., a Falcon 50 executive jet having on board the President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, as well as several other government officials, returning from a meeting...

Nigeria: the art of neocolonial dystopia and postcolonial utopias.
June 22, 2003... It usually begins with the sluggish beaded sound of the percussion instrument shekere, (1) the distinct shuffling rhythm of which gradually fades into a backdrop for two distinct sounds: a rapidly tapping wooden one and the deeper beat of a...

Dangerous man: a report of Mr. Vagabond's saying and activities, who broadcast to the whole world that there was no God, that it was the devil that created the earth, and who eventually died an active preacher of God. a.k.a. Dangerous Man vs. Princess.
June 22, 2003... by The Master of Life (Money Master): Okenwa Olisah Onitsha: New Era Press, 1959. 2nd ed. 1960. All imaginative art remains at a distance and this distance, once chosen, must be firmly held against a pushing world.... Our unimaginative...

All hail Atunda! popularity and anarchy in the music of Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
June 22, 2003... If you could see Fela in the seventies--the man turned Nigeria completely upside down! He had the whole country in his band; it was as if be owned Nigeria! To tell the truth, Fela at that time was a law unto himself and did whatever be...

Hinigeria's emergent video film industry.
June 22, 2003... Filmmaking in Nigeria is currently overtaken by the phenomenon known as video film. Thematically bold, stylistically exuberant, and financially fulfilling for its practitioners, the industry did not, however, lack historical antecedents. This...

Writing the anxious city: images of Lagos in Nigerian home video films.
June 22, 2003... Chinua Achebe once wrote that the great problem of the African is anxiety. In his witty essay, "Africa and Her Writers," Achebe is not concerned with the medium of the video film--the new "literature" of the city that I am preoccupied with in...

A director's vision for theater in Africa: Adeniyi Coker interviews Ola Rotimi--one of Nigeria's foremost playwrights and directors.
June 22, 2003... On Beginning a Career in Nigeria Adeniyi Coker: How did it all begin for you? Ola Rotimi: I got to Ife in 1966 after graduating from Yale, and when I arrived at Ife there wasn't any active theater unit that is to say, active in the...

Tales from the Heart: a conversation with Maryse Conde.
June 22, 2003... In late May 2002, the New York University Institute of African-American Affairs hosted novelist, playwright, and critic Maryse Conde and her husband, translator Richard Philcox. Conde in conversation with BR/RN's Barbara Lewis, spoke on a...

"Nomad's Land": Abdourahman Waberi's Djibouti.
June 22, 2003... "J'habite toujours, comme d'autres a Lauralite-sur-Lecry." (1) --Abdourahamn Waberi, Le Nouvel Observateur Abdourahman Waberi was born in 1965 in Djibouti, (2) and now lives in France. In 1994, he published his first short story...

Somali women of Canada.
June 22, 2003... (Translated by Jeanne M. Garane) What is remarkable, for anyone who knows how to interpret a silence, detect a mutter, decipher a pout, catch a little sign of excitement on the cheeks or between the lines of the forehead (passion...

U.S. exit, African voices, and Francophone loyalty.
June 22, 2003... In an article entitled "Paris on My Mind," the Djibouti-born writer Abdourahman A. Waberi, now resident in France, traces the cadastral record of his migrations: "Of course, he'll leave Paris with his little family. The circle of his...

Great wall.
June 22, 2003... (Translated by Jeanne Garane) Qinglongqiao, kilometer 70: The Trans-Siberian makes an obligator) stop at the base of the Great Wall. As soon as the very early morning news is known, the entire crowd of foreign visitors, as though one...

Video Krishna.(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Video Krishna to Sutaba Biswas Sad and buck naked. A man, alone and almost still, is staring out of curtainless windows. Is fat and gray and (Why, Sutapa?) pink. What have your ...

Leaving the Noise of the World Behind.
June 22, 2003... Leaving The Noise of The World Behind At first you cannot get used to it-- New York City and its constant turning, cars up and down the roadways which split the city into its languages. You cannot get used to...

Chiraq.
June 22, 2003... Chiraq (full moons glow, crimson rivers carry silt to fertile deltas) Collapsed on the embankment a brown mound shivers, lids closed nose grazes ground arms under thighs under breasts...

Creole recitations: John Jacob Thomas and Colonial Formation in the Late Nineteenth-Century Caribbean.
June 22, 2003... Faith Smith Caribbean discourse, to quote the title of Edouard Glissant's noted book, has had a strange career. When US 'Black Studies' was created in the political turmoil at San Francisco State University between 1967 and 1969, the...

Carrie Mae Weems Brings Love to Harlem: A Certain Kind of Love.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2003... Carrie Mae Weems For over two decades, Carrie Mae Weems' photography has offered an emotional and meditative journey into African American history and identity. Weems portrays black subjects left out of art historical narratives and uses...

Africa in World Politics: a Pan-African Perspective.(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... Guy Martin Not long ago, Libyan President Muammar Al-Qadaffi visualized and advocated the African Union as a single "United States of Africa" with one African president ruling over a federation of States, with member states each being...

Recently published books.
June 22, 2003... The following list is assembled from information provided by publishers. Prices and page counts are subject to change. The Eroding Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya 1890-1963 by David Anderson (Ohio University Press; 336...

Femi Osunla--Fela Anikulapo Kuti's political photographer.
June 22, 2003... Femi Osunla carries an unusual burden. In public places or prirate conversations, his stares are meditative and his charming smile disarming. This shy and unassuming individual aptly named Femi-Foto carries photographic images chronicling...