An intense and poised novel in the form of a letter written by Ramatoulaye, who has recently been widowed.

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.

Many teachers of African studies have found novels to be effective assignments in courses. In this guide, teachers describe their favourite African novels - drawn from all over the continent - and share their experiences of using them in the classroom.

'Reading this handbook, practising writers will gain in confidence as they rationalize their craft, while beginning writers will learn a great deal, from the useful tips, to write better. The book contains, among other things, a beautiful foreword. Two enlightening essays on the responsibility of writer in society and an excellent one on the teachability of creative writing conclude the text. A rare category in African literature, this important handbook will be useful not only to writers but to both students and teachers of African literature.'---Shadrach A. Ambanasom, Associate Professor of Literature, University of Yaounde I (ENS Bambili), Cameroon 'This is a significant contribution that will benefit young writers striving towards creativity, it will help them to begin understanding this sometimes elusive and equally challenging process. The authors have done a remarkable job appraising the works of select authors in different genres in an effort to buttress their goal of demystifying the creative process to young writers.' Emmanuel Fru Doh, Century College, Minnesota, USA To the Budding Creative Writer: A Handbook is designed to help young writers come to grips with questions and problems relative to their creative efforts. `The authors discuss a range of topics, providing guidelines on such issues as style, technique, point of view, characterization, poetic diction, figurative language, denotation and connotation, etc. They equally offer useful critical comments on some of the works of accomplished African writers whom they cite as models for beginning writers, fusing literary creativity with literary criticism. All along the co-authors stress the centrality, in imaginative writing, of both the `what' and the `how' or matter and manner, and how to combine both to good effect.

'This is a cogent analysis of the complexities of gender in the work of nine contemporary Anglophone and Francophone novelists. . . . offers illuminating interpretations of worthy writers . . . ' --Multicultural Review 'This book reaffirms Bessie Head's remark that books are a tool, in this case a tool that allows readers to understand better the rich lives and the condition of African women. Excellent notes and a rich bibliography.' --Choice '. . . a college-level analysis which will appeal to any interested in African studies and literature.' --The Bookwatch This book applies gender as a category of analysis to the works of nine sub-Saharan women writers: Aidoo, Bá, Beyala, Dangarembga, Emecheta, Head, Liking, Tlali, and Zanga Tsogo. The author appropriates western feminist theories of gender in an African literary context, and in the process, she finds and names critical theory that is African, indigenous, self-determining, which she then melds with western feminist theory and comes out with an over-arching theory that enriches western, post-colonial and African critical perspectives.

Authoritative, creative, and groundbreaking original literary essays about an important emerging area of study.

This book focuses on the work of Western-educated African and Indian women writers resisting gender identity constructions at various points in history. Author Jaspal Singh examines colonial and national gender identity constructions in female-authored texts at 'home' and the continued deployment of and resistance to gender identity impositions in various spaces. Hoping to generate a greater understanding of and appreciation for the contributions of these diasporic women writers within postcolonial literature and analysis, Singh contextualises their work within social, political, and cultural conditions. Her study aids the empowerment of Indian and African women writers as important players in the emerging field of postcolonial studies. In particular, she argues for the importance of inclusion of texts from women of different classes, religions and castes, both in the developed and the under-developed world. Singh's analysis makes reference to texts by Indian and African women in India, the West, and in other Third World spaces with large Indian communities, namely Africa and Burma.

Looks at the work of ten African authors, including Chinua Achebe, Miriama Ba, Nadine Gordimer, and Alan Paton.

The influence of colonialism and race on the development of African literature has been the subject of a number of studies. The effect of patriarchy and gender, however, and indeed the contributions of African women, have up until now been largely ignored by the critics. 'Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender' is the first extensive account of African literature from a feminist perspective. In this first radical and exciting work Florence Stratton outlines the features of an emerging female tradition in African fiction. A chapter is dedicated to each to the works of four women writers: Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba. In addition she provides challenging new readings of canonical male authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo'o and Wole Soyinka. 'Contemporary African' 'Literature and the Politics of Gender' thus provides the first truly comprehensive definition of the current literary tradition in Africa.

This collection is a study of African literature framed by the central, and multi-faceted, idea of 'mother' - motherland, mothertongue, motherwit, motherhood, mothering - looking at the paradoxical location of (m)other as both central and marginal. Whilst the volume stands as a sustained feminist analysis, it engages feminist theory itself by showing how issues in feminism are, in African literature, recast in different and complex ways.

This reference book surveys the richness of postcolonial African literature. The volume begins with an introductory essay on postcolonial criticism and African writing, then presents alphabetically arranged profiles of some 60 writers, including Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tahbar Ben Jelloun, among others. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes that appear in the author's writings, an overview of the critical response to the author's work, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These profiles are written by expert contributors and reflect many different perspectives. The volume concludes with a selected general bibliography of the most important critical works on postcolonial African literature.

This collection of letters between Maud Gonne (Irish activist, actress, and long-time love of W. B. Yeats) and John Quinn (Irish-American lawyer, art collector, and patron) deals with art, literature, Irish politics, and the horrific conflicts of the early twentieth century. Their letters are filled with details about the Irish fight for freedom, and how it affected Yeats, Pound, Joyce, and other friends; about Gonne's never-ending battle to establish a school feeding program for the starving children of Ireland; and about the alarming changes in the political and social world of their time.

William Gilpin (1724–1804) is commonly known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque. He was also an Anglican clergyman, a schoolmaster with modern educational ideas and the author of several biographies, tours and essays. The present edition provides a first insight into his more personal writings, since it is made of the correspondence he exchanged with his grandson between 1794 and 1803. It is teeming with personal, intimate detail on his daily life, domestic and aesthetic concerns. The letters also deal with such various topics as nature, architecture and religion. The relationship is highly pleasurable and discloses the art of being a grand-father, as well as illustrating the first steps of a young boy’s writing of letters. The tone of some of William Gilpin’s letters is highly moral, since the grand-father’s aim was also obviously to educate and edify his grandson. As such, the present book is an excellent counterpart to William Gilpin’s letter-writing manual, William Gilpin’s Letter-Writer (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). The correspondence is presented with an introduction, notes and index, focusing on the issues of sources, society and epistolary writing.

and the one in the middle which judges as he enjoys and enjoys as he judges. This latter kind really reproduces the work of art anew. The division of our Symposium into three sections is justified by the fact that phenomenology, from Husserl, Heidegger, Moritz Geiger, Ingarden, in Germany and Poland, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, E. Levinas in France, Unamuno in Spain, and Tymieniecka, in the United States, have revealed striking coincidences in trying to answer the following questions: What is the philosophical vocation of literature? Does literature have any significance for our lives? Why does the lyric moment, present in all creative endeavors, in myth, dance, plastic art, ritual, poetry, lift the human life to a higher and authentically human level of the existential experience of man? Our investigations answer our fundamental inquiry: What makes a literary work a work of art? What makes a literary work a literary work, if not aesthetic enjoyment? As much as the formation of an aesthetic language culminates in artistic creation, the formation of a philosophical language lives within the orbit of creative imagination.