Tuesday, November 27, 2007

afroasianl lit update 1

Hi, guys! We had our first set of quizzes last Tuesday, November 27, 2007. It was a 20-item test on Africa's 100 Best Books and a 15-item test on Modern African Literature. Those who were absent last meeting, please be informed that our change of schedule is already approved. We will be meeting regularly at AMS208, 6:30-7:30, TTHS.

I got the e-mails of Lehai, Pennylane, and Cesleste. I'll wait for others to send me their powerpoint presentations.

On Saturday, December 1, Lehai, Pennylane and Celeste will have their research presentations.

See you and Good luck!


Here are some of the details they sent me. For your copy, please download.

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Diop, Birago


*Ouakam, Senegal; December 11, 1906 - Dakar, Senegal; November 25, 1989
* was a Senegalese poet and storyteller, active writer in the Négritude movement in the 1930s, as well as a veterinarian and diplomat.
*He was born in Ouakam, a small village near Dakar. In 1920 he went to study at Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, and later on he went to study veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse, and worked as a veterinary surgeon for the French colonial government in several West African countries. Throughout his civil service career, he collected and reworked Wolof folktales, and also wrote poetry, memoirs, and a play. He served as first Senegalese ambassador to Tunisia from 1960 to 1964


Les contes d’ Amadou Koumba


*Travel in time, the topics, the words. Traditional and original topics, bestiary cruel and tender with the multiple adventures, universe of the men, immutable. Tinder koumba, griot, storyteller, singer, diali in Sudan, guéwèl in Senegal, that which transmits the word, the message with the wire of the generations. It is him which reports in Birago Diop, of the stories, the tales and the legends, rythmés by the tom-tom or the water-bottle.
*A profusion of feelings seize the reader: fright, cheerfulness, the emotion take turns. Golo, the monkey, is at the origin of the reputation of Koumba which, with her former husband, will go in Maka-Kouli to hear the sentence of the marabout. Wisdom, humour and realism: "One knows the utility of the buttocks only when the hour has just sat down!".


Diop, Boubacar Boris

*Born in Dakar in 1946, novelist, essay writer, playwright, and scenario writer, he was also the director of the Morning of Dakar.
*In 1998, it took part, with ten other African writers, with the project of writing on the genocide in Rwanda: "Rwanda: to write by having of memory ". product of which was its Murambi work, him livre DES ossements.


The joys of Motherhood


*Written by Buchi Emecheta (1979), this book is about the life of Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu Ego's life revolves around her children, and through them Nnu Ego gains the respect of her society.
*When colonial influences begin to change traditional tribal values, however, Nnu Ego is faced with new truths that she must learn to live with. The book takes us on a journey with Nnu Ego as we participate in her struggle between understanding and accepting the new ways of her people or clinging to her traditional values.
*This book provides excellent insight to the effects of colonialism on native Nigerians.


Gordimer, Nadine

*(born 20 November 1923) is a South African writer, political activist and Nobel Prize in literature laureate.
*Her writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned.
*She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes. She was born in Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg the daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer.
nHer parents were both Jewish immigrants, her father a watchmaker from Lithuania near the Latvian border, and her mother from London


Archibald Campbell Mzolisa Jordan


(30 October 1906 - 1968) was a novelist, literary historian and intellectual pioneer of African studies in South Africa. He was born at the Mbokothwane Mission in the Tsolo district, Pondoland (later Transkei), as son of an Anglican Church minister. He trained as teacher at St John's College in Mthatha, completed his junior certificate at Lovedale College, Alice, and then won a scholarship to Fort Hare University College. He completed his literary training with a BA degree (1934), an MA on the Nguni and Sotho groups (1942), and his doctoral degree on A Phonological and Grammatical Study of Literary Xhosa in 1957. In 1961 Jordan was offered a Carnegie bursary to do research in the United States of America, but was refused a passport by the South African government. As a result of political pressure, Jordan was forced to leave South Africa on an exit permit. He settled in America where he was appointed professor in African Languages and Literature at the University of California (Los Angeles) and later moved, in similar capacity, to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1968, Jordan died in Madison, after a long illness.


Elsa Joubert


born as Elsabé Antoinette Murray on 19 October 1922 in Paarl, is an Afrikaans-speaking South African writer.
•Elsa Joubert grew up in Paarl and matriculated from the all-girls school La Rochelle in Paarl in 1939. She then studied at the University of Stellenbosch from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1942 and an SED (Secondary Education Diploma) in 1943. She continued her studies at the University of Cape Town which she left with a Master's degree in Dutch-Afrikaans literature at in 1945.


Camara Laye


•He was born Malinke, or Mandé, a group that traditionally supplied the blacksmiths and goldsmiths of Guinea. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were not predominantly influenced by French culture. He attended both the Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fourteen he went to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to continue his education. He attended vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studies in mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalauréat.
•(b. 1928 in Kouroussa, Upper Guinea - d. 1980 in Dakar) was a renowned African writer from Guinea. During college he wrote The African Child (L'enfant Noir in French), a novel based loosely on his own childhood. He would later become a writer of many essays and was a foe of the government of Guinea.


Sindiwe Magona

*born 1943) is a South African writer. A native of the Transkei, she grew up in a township near Cape Town, where she worked as a domestic and completed her secondary education by correspondence. Magona later graduated from the University of South Africa and earned a graduate degree from Columbia University. Her first novel was Mother to Mother, and she has also written autobiographies and short story collections. She retired from the United Nations in 2003 and currently lives in South Africa.


Naguib Mahfouz


(Arabic: نجيب محفوظ) (December 11, 1911August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature who managed to modernize Arabic literature. He is regarded as one of the first writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq al-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism.




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