Research in African Literatures articles from March 2006

Research in African Literatures archives from March 2006

Introduction.(Textual Ownership in Francophone African Writing," Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University, 22-23 October 2004)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... It is now almost 40 years since Roland Barthes, in a subsequently much-quoted phrase, proclaimed the death of the author. Today it is clear that, as Mark Twain remarked in a different context, reports of the author's death were greatly...

Elissa Rhais: scandals, impostures, who owns the story?(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT The issues of who owns a text and who has a right to be called an author are passionately re-examined whenever a writer's textual practices or public performance of identity are suddenly exposed as deceptive. And when the...

Reflections on a triangular trade in borrowing and stealing: textual exploitation in a selection of African, Caribbean, and European writers in French.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT By analogy with the lucrative triangular trade, this paper investigates cases of literature feeding off literature along the edges of that same triangle between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. It invites the reader to use the...

Magical realism: "arme miraculeuse" for the African novel?(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT Congolese novelist Sony Labou Tansi has been widely celebrated as a leader in the revival of francophone African letters that took place in the 1980s. In the process, commentators have repeatedly insisted on affiliating him with...

Testimony, co-authorship, and dispossession among women of Maghrebi origin in France.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT This article focuses on a number of recent narratives published in France by women of Maghrebi immigrant descent with the assistance of majority ethnic co-authors. It reveals a dynamic of dispossession at work in these texts...

Of imposture and incompetence: Paul Smail's Vivre me tue.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT Paul Smail's Vivre me tue was marketed as a demonstration of the importance of artistic talent and the irrelevance of ethnic origins in determining the value of a literary text. Yet these claims are repeatedly contradicted by...

Intertextuality, plagiarism, and recycling in Ousmane Sembene's Le docker noir (Black Docker) (1).(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT Colonialism and the accompanying violence of Western language literacy that was indissociable from the pedagogic mechanisms of the French imperial ambition left indelible marks on francophone literary production. The objective...

Textual ownership in L'etrange destin de Wangrin (The Fortunes of Wangrin) by Amadou Hampate Ba.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT Amadou Hampate Ba has constantly underplayed the literary status of his writings to emphasize their factual reference and his debt to his oral informants. He does not, for instance, consider Letrange destin de Wangrin a novel...

Calixthe Beyala: prizes, plagiarism, and "authenticity".(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT In 1996, Calixthe Beyala was twice accused of plagiarism. One of the accusations led to her being found guilty in the High Court in Paris. Pardoxically, in that same year she was awarded the highly prestigious Grand Prix du...

In search of Camara Laye.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2006... ABSTRACT Against the background of persistent rumors that Camara Laye's four novels were not in fact his creations but were the products of various hands--allegations that Adele King examines extensively in her book Rereading Camara...

Orality: The Power of the Spoken Word.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Orality: The Power of the Spoken Word BY GRAHAM FURNISS Houndsmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2004. xii + 188 pp. ISBN 1-4039-3404-5 cloth. Xhosa mythmakers told me that the myths that they performed are not truth; they are a means to...

Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of the Urhobo People.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Poetry, Performance, and Art: Udje Dance Songs of the Urhobo People BY TANURE OJAIDE Durham, NC: Carolina Academic P, 2003. 177 pp. Tanure Ojaide's study of the udje dance songs is the first extended book that attempts to situate this...

Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa: Nation and African Modernity.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa: Nation and African Modernity BY KWAKU LARBI KORANG Rochester, NY: University of Rochester P, 2004. x + 352 pp. ISBN: 1-58046-146-8. In an article addressing the silence (or silencing) of Africa in...

Southern African Literatures.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Southern African Literatures BY MICHAEL CHAPMAN Pietermaritzburg: U of Natal P, 2003. ISBN 1-86914-028-1 paper. 533 pp. This book contains s a 15-page preface (x-xxiv), a map of southern Africa (xxv), countries comprising the southern...

Readings in Gender in Africa.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Readings in Gender in Africa. ED. ANDREA CORNWALL. Oxford: James Currey; Bloomington: Indiana University P, 2005. vii + 247 pp. ISBN 0-85255-871-6 paper. Readings in Gender in Africa edited by Andrea Cornwall is a thoughtful selection of...

New Women's Writing in African Literature.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... New Women's Writing in African Literature ED. ERNEST N. EMENYONU African Literature 24. Oxford: James Currey; Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2004. 210 pp. 12.95 [pounds sterling]. This is the first issue of the African Literature journal to...

White Women Writers and Their African Invention.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... White Women Writers and Their African Invention BY SIMON LEWIS Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2003. 263 pp. ISBN 0-8130-2652-0 cloth. The two white women writers who constitute the primary focus of this text share a certain degree of...

Impossible Missions? German Economic, Military, and Humanitarian Efforts in Africa.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Impossible Missions? German Economic, Military, and Humanitarian Efforts in Africa BY NINA BERMAN Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-1334-4. xii + 271 pp. Nina Berman's book is divided into an introduction (1-21) and two main...

Remember Mongo Beti.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Remember Mongo Beti ED. AMBROISE KOM Bayreuth African Studies Series 67. Bayreuth, 2003. During our last meeting in his office at the Peuples Noirs bookstore, Mongo Beti surprised me by offering me a beer, thereby submitting to the...

Nobody Ever Said Aids: Poems and Stories from Southern Africa.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Nobody Ever Said Aids: Poems and Stories From Southern Africa COMP. AND ED. NOBANTU RASEBOTSA, MEG SAMUELSON, AND KYLIE THOMAS Cape Town: Kwela, 2004. ISBN 0795701845. This long-awaited collection is ground-breaking in its scope and...

A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference BY JEFFREY ALLEN TUCKER Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2004. 344 pp. Jeffrey Allen Tucker's analysis of the writings of Samuel R. Delany reminds us that black identity politics...

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 315: Langston Hughes, a Documentary Volume.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 315: Langston Hughes, a Documentary Volume ED. CHRISTOPHER C. DE SANTIS Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman / Thomson Gale, 2005. xxxii + 458 pp. in quarto. ISBN 0-7876-8133-4 cloth. Dead poets...

Resisting Alterities: Wilson Harris and Other Avatars of Otherness.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Resisting Alterities: Wilson Harris and Other Avatars of Otherness ED. MARCO FAZZlNI Cross/Cultures 71. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. xiv + 255 pp. ISBN 90-420-1200-5 paper. The contributions to Resisting Alterities: Wilson Harris and Other...

Hotbeds: Black-White Love in Novels from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Hotbeds: Black-White Love in Novels from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean BY PIA THIELMANN Zomba: Kachere Series, 2004. 384 pp. Pb 18.31 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 99908-76-23-1. The "hot" issue of interracial love in novels by...

Africa and Its Significant Others.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Africa and Its Significant Others ED. ISABEL HOVING, FRANS-WILLEM KORSTEN, AND ERNST VAN ALPHEN Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. 208 pp. ISBN 1381-1312 paper. Structurally Africa and Its Significant Others evinces an ambitious agenda. The...

A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness BY RACHEL E. HARDING Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. Scholars of the African diaspora have long focused on religious ideology, institutions, and social manifestations as a...

New World Modernisms: T. S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... New World Modernisms: T. S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite BY CHARLES W. POLLARD Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2004. x + 231 pp. 0-8139-2278-X paper. Charles Pollard argues that to appreciate Caribbean poetry--and, for...

Ecrire en pays assiege Haiti: Writing Under Siege.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Ecrire en pays assiege; Haiti: Writing under Siege ED. MARIE-AGNES SOURIEAU AND KATHLEEN BALUTANSKY Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2004. ISBN 90-420-1753-8 paper. Jorge Luis Borges once made the seemingly outrageous declaration that censorship might...

Figures in a Dance: The Theatre of W. B. Yeats and Wole Soyinka.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Figures in a Dance: The Theatre of W. B. Yeats and Wole Soyinka BY CHII AKPORJI Trenton: Africa World P, 2003. ISBN 1-59221-104-6 paper. 269 pp. Hardly any comparative work has been done on W. B. Yeats and Wole Soyinka, in spite of every...

The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia BY M. KEITH BOOKER Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. xxi + 318 pp. ISBN: 0-325-07063-6. Chinua Achebe is probably the best-known writer in the history of African letters. He has been the subject of several...

From Africa: New Francophone Stories.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... From Africa: New Francophone Stories ED. ADELE KING Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004. 150 pp. ISBN 0-8032-7801-1 paper. This slim and attractive product gathers together 14 short stories from sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa, almost all...

Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study in Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities.(Book Review)
March 22, 2006... Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study In Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities BY FEMI OKIREMUETE SHAKA Trenton: Africa World P, 2004. 453 pp. ISBN 1-59221-086-4 $29.95 paper. Recently scholars have...

Studies in Francophone Literature: The Series "Lettres du Sud".(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Studies in Francophone Literature: The Series "Lettres du Sud" Paris: Editions Karthala, 1980-2005. When Presence Africaine was created in 1947, first as a journal, soon after as a publishing house, it was the only publisher of...

Books received.(Bibliography)
March 22, 2006... Attridge, Derek. J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Beier, Georgina, ed. "They Keep Their Fires Burning": Conversations on Food, Manners and Hospitality in Africa. Bayreuth African Studies 72....