African Literature

‘The Ruler and his henchmen: Portrait of an African kleptocracy’. Review of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow.

by Andrew van der Vlies

Times Literary Supplement, 20 October 2006: 19

‘The stressful bane’. Review of Wole Soyinka, You Must Set Forth At Dawn: A Memoir.

by Andrew van der Vlies

Times Literary Supplement, 17 August 2007: 9-10.

On the Ambiguities of Narrative and of History: Writing (about) the Past in Recent South African Literary Criticism

by Andrew van der Vlies

Review essay. Journal of Southern African Studies 34.4 (December 2008): 949-61. [DOI 10.1080/03057070802456870]

‘The people who are Africa’. Review of Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child, reissues of Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, and Bernth Lindfors, Early Achebe.

by Andrew van der Vlies

Times Literary Supplement, 2 April 2010: 5.

The History of the Book in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Andrew van der Vlies

In Michael F. Suarez SJ & Henry Woudhuysen, gen. eds. The Oxford Companion to the Book. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Vol. 1. 313-20. [ISBN: 978-0-19-860653-6]

Slavery and Colonialism: The Worst Terrorism on Africa

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno, Mohamed H. Ingiriis, and Jamal M. Haji; Published in African Renaissance, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2012.

Humans need not justify terrorism of any kind, regardless of whether one is Muslim, Christian or Jew, because it is... more Humans need not justify terrorism of any kind, regardless of whether one is Muslim, Christian or Jew, because it is the axis of evil and devastation of mankind. However, the deliberate use of the term terrorism in recent decades was carefully selected, mainly, against a certain religion (Islam). The idea was then globally politicized by the Western world. Leaving that scholarly view in its own right, we disagree with the opinion raising terrorism as the devil’s just-born child of evil, when in reality Africans had been terrorized for centuries as slaves and human chattel. Hence the basis for the concept of this thesis: conceptualizing the episode of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ from the broader perspective of its practice from the Middle Passage or the Atlantic Slave Trade. To portray that argument and broaden the scope of the debate over this critically sensitive subject, we divided the discussion into three sections: an examination of what constitutes terrorism and terrorist; history of terrorism and terrorists from an Africa perspective; and the ideological constraints within the subject of terrorism as practiced by the US and its Western allies.

Orality, Literature, and African Religions (Kenneth Mtata and Jonathan A. Draper)

by Kenneth Mtata

Il était une fois... la grande nuit du conte

by Yan Hamel

Revue jeu, no 142, 2012.1, p. 158-161.

Fluid attachment: reframing peacebuilding through Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah n'est pas obligé

by Christina Lux

Good Luck Dolls in Thailand

by Dion Peoples

Inspired by something I determined to be racist, I tried to investigate the matter, and found out that my suspicions are likely to be true.

"Continental Drift: The Disjunction of North and Sub-Saharan Africa." Research in African Literatures 42.1 (Spring 2011): 1-13.

by Ziad Bentahar

Matrimony Unpropitious

by Mohamed Eno

Another excerpt from the book Corpses on the Menu

The African masses should beware of a total subscription to the 'Shared Values' project. Previous as well as current... more The African masses should beware of a total subscription to the 'Shared Values' project. Previous as well as current hardships created by the West should give us enough reading of where we are heading and who to trust along the journey.

Issue 6.1 Telling Stories/Telling Lives, Editorial

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

The contributions in this issue-both autobiography and fiction-share a concern with the elusiveness of the past, the... more The contributions in this issue-both autobiography and fiction-share a concern with the elusiveness of the past, the fickleness of memory, the journeys we embark upon and experiences gathered along the way, the compulsion to make stories and therefore sense of our lives, and recognition of their own precariousness and of being always in transit.

Issue 6.1 Telling Stories/Telling Lives, Table of Contents

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

The contributions in this issue-both autobiography and fiction-share a concern with the elusiveness of the past, the... more The contributions in this issue-both autobiography and fiction-share a concern with the elusiveness of the past, the fickleness of memory, the journeys we embark upon and experiences gathered along the way, the compulsion to make stories and therefore sense of our lives, and recognition of their own precariousness and of being always in transit.

Stephanie Newell, West African Literatures: ways of reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pb£ 18.00–978 0 19927 397 3; hb£ 43.00–978 0 19929 887 7). 2006, …

by Francoise Ugochukwu

Intellectualism amid Ethnocentrism: Mukthar and the 4.5 Factor

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno; Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies Vol.9, 2009, pp. 137-145.

The Journey Back to the Ancestral Homeland: The Return of the Somali Bantu Wazigua to Modern Tanzania

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authhored with Omar A. Eno;  In Abdi M. Kusow & Stephanie R.  Bjork (Eds.) From Mogadishu to Dixon: The Somali Diaspora in a Global Context. Trenton NJ: The Red Sea Press Inc.

Charlatans Chicanery

by Mohamed Eno

Thr poem is an excerpt from my forthcoming volume Guilt of Otherness

The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic. The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic.

Understanding Somalia through the Prism of Bantu Jareer Literature

by Mohamed Eno

In Ali J. Ahmed and Taddesse Adera, eds., The Road Less Traveled:
Reflections on the Literatures of the Horn of Africa.

This essay intends to touch briefly on the comparative cultures between Somalia and some of the communities in the... more This essay intends to touch briefly on the comparative cultures between Somalia and some of the communities in the neighboring countries. Second, the essay discusses the culture and literature of the Bantu Jareer, and their "thought and knowledge," which Sorokin calls "the very essence of civilization." To embark on this journey, we must unlearn much of what has been said of the Jareer, in particular, and of Somali culture in general. This is important if we are to discover what constitutes the aesthetics of Jareer history, literary art, social culture and thought. This act of unlearning what is committed to the official collective memory of the Somali demythologizes what I call "monoculturality of the camel complex" so pervasive in discussions of Somali culture. It is an act also that will help us uncover the Jarrer's "...tool of self-definition in relation to others."-Wa Thiong'o.

Returning to the Baobab fou: (Dis)integrating roots in Ken Bugul's and Marie Cardinal's autobiographies

by Amy Hubbell

In Ada Uzoamaka Azodo and Jeanne-Sarah de Larquier (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on Ken Bugul: From alternative choices to oppositional practices. Trenton, N. J.: Africa World Press, 2008. 81-99.