African Literatures and Beyond: A Florilegium (Cross/Cultures - Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English, 168)

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This tribute collection reflects the wide range and diversity of James Gibbs's academic interests. The focus is on Africa, but comparative studies of other literatures also receive attention. Fiction, drama, and poetry by writers from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ireland, England, Germany, India, and the Caribbean are surveyed alongside significant missionaries, scientists, performers, and scholars. The writers discussed include Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kobina Sekyi, Raphael Armattoe, J.E. Casely Hayford, Michael Dei-Anang, Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Armah, John Kolosa Kargbo, Dele Charley, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Okot p'Bitek, Jonathan Sajiwandani, Samuel E. Krune Mqhayi, A.S. Mopeli-Paulus, Kelwyn Sole, Anna Seghers, Raja Rao, and Arundhati Roy. Other essays treat the black presence in Ireland, anonymous rap artists in Chicago, the Jamaican missionary Joseph Jackson Fuller in the Cameroons, the African-American actor Ira Aldridge in Sweden, the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman in South Africa, and the literary scholar and editor Eldred Durosimi Jones in Sierra Leone. Interviews with the Afro-German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael and the Irish-Nigerian dramatist Gabriel Gbadamosi are also included. Also offered are poems by Jack Mapanje and Kofi Anyidoho, short stories by Charles R. Larson and Robert Fraser, plays by Femi Osofisan and Martin Banham, and an account of a dramatic reading of a script written and co-performed by James Gibbs. Contributors: Anne Adams, Sola Adeyemi, Kofi Anyidoho, Awo Mana Asiedu, Martin Banham, Eckhard Breitinger, Gordon Collier, James Currey, Geoffrey V. Davis, Chris Dunton, Robert Fraser, Raoul J. Granqvist, Gareth Griffiths, C.L. Innes, Charles R. Larson, Bernth Lindfors, Leif Lorentzon, Jack Mapanje, Christine Matzke, Mpalive-Hangson Msiska, Femi Osofisan, Eustace Palmer, Jane Plastow, Lynn Taylor, and Pia Thielmann. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface Introduction West Africa Cultural Studies, Power, and the Idea of theHegemonic in Wole Soyinka's Works Interpreting the Interpreters: The Narratives of the Postcolony in Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters The Enduring Relevance of Kobina Sekyi'sThe Blinkards in Twenty-First-Century Ghana The Agony and the Ecstasy: Sierra Leonean Dramatists'Confrontation with the Sierra Leonean Landscape The Reverend Joseph Jackson Fuller:A 'Native' Evangelist and 'Black' Identity in the Cameroons Eastern and Central Africa A Modest Plant, Easily Crushed:Radio Drama in Blin, Eritrea Through Determination to Happiness? EasternAfrican Slavery in Life and Literature "Shine your light, Zimbabwe" South Africa From Mqhayi to Sole: Four Poemson the Sinking of the Troopship Mendi Fieldwork as Translation: Linnaeus' ApostleAnders Sparrman and the Hottentot Perspective ElseWhere Orality and Performance:A Source of Pan-African Social Self Africans and Ireland:History, Society, and the Black Nexus Ira Aldridge in Stockholm "Who'll get my library after I'm gone?"An Interview with the Septuagenarian Afro-German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael Into the Heart of Whiteness: Performing African Moonin Krefeld: Gabriel Gbadamosi in Conversation Von Jenseits des Meeres: Romantic andRevolutionary Visions of Caribbean History "But it will have to be a new English": A Comparative Discussion of the 'Nativization' of English Among Afro- and Indo-English Authors Journals African Literature Today and African Theatre:The James Gibbs Connection Poetry, Fiction, Drama He Spoke Truth-Quietly The Carwash, Clifton Moor, York(for James & Patience) Crosscut Kariba's Last Stand Odùduwà, Don't Go! A One-Act Play Mosquito! Or, Addition, Vernacular, or Rat?A Railway for Freetown James Gibbs’s Pinteresque Diversion Notes on Contributors