Author: M.G. Vassanji Publisher: Anchor Canada ISBN: 0385671458 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 402
Book Description
From M.G. Vassanji, two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and a Governor General's Literary Award winner for Non-fiction, comes a poignant love letter to his birthplace and homeland, East Africa—a powerful and surprising portrait that only an insider could write. Part travelogue, part memoir, and part history-rarely-told, here is a powerful and timely portrait of a constantly evolving land. From a description of Zanzibar and its evolution to a visit to a slave-market town at Lake Tanganyika; from an encounter with a witchdoctor in an old coastal village to memories of his own childhood in the streets of Dar es Salaam and the suburbs of Nairobi, Vassanji combines brilliant prose, thoughtful and candid observation, and a lifetime of revisiting and reassessing the continent that molded him—and, as we discover when we follow the journeys that became this book, shapes him still.
Author: M.G. Vassanji Publisher: Doubleday Canada ISBN: 0307371778 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
A Globe and Mail Best Book The inimitable M.G. Vassanji turns his eye to India, the homeland of his ancestors, in this powerfully moving tale of family and country. Part travelogue, part history, A Place Within is M.G. Vassanji’s intelligent and beautifully written journey to explore where he belongs. It would take many lifetimes, it was said to me during my first visit, to see all of India. The desperation must have shown on my face to absorb and digest all I possibly could. This was not something I had articulated or resolved; and yet I recall an anxiety as I travelled the length and breadth of the country, senses raw to every new experience, that even in the distraction of a blink I might miss something profoundly significant. I was not born in India, nor were my parents; that might explain much in my expectation of that visit. Yet how many people go to the homeland of their grandparents with such a heartload of expectation and momentousness; such a desire to find themselves in everything they see? Is it only India that clings thus, to those who’ve forsaken it; is this why Indians in a foreign land seem always so desperate to seek each other out? What was India to me?
Author: M.G. Vassanji Publisher: Picador ISBN: 1250109183 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
In 1988, a retired schoolteacher named Pius Fernandes receives an old diary found in the back room of an East African shop. Written in 1913 by a British colonial administrator, the diary captivates Fernandes, who begins to research the coded history he encounters in its terse, laconic entries. What he uncovers is a story of forbidden liaisons and simmering vengeances, family secrets and cultural exiles--a story that leads him on an investigative journey through his own past and Africa's.
Author: Bernard Calas Publisher: African Books Collective ISBN: 9987080944 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 432
Book Description
The name Dar es Salaam comes from the Arabic phrase meaning house of peace. A popular but erroneous translation is ëhaven of peaceí resulting from a mix-up of the Arabic words "dar" (house) and "bandar" (harbour). Named in 1867 by the Sultan of Zanzibar, The town has for a long time benefitted from a reputation of being a place of tranquility. The tropical drowsiness is a comfort To The socialist poverty and under-equipment that causes an unending anxiety to reign over the town. Today, For the Tanzanian, The town has become Bongoland, that is, a place where survival is a matter of cunning and intelligence (bongo means ëbrainí in Kiswahili). Far from being an anecdote, this slide into toponomy records the mutations that affect the links that Tanzanians maintain with their principal city And The manner in which it represents them. This book takes into account the changes by departing from the hypothesis that they reveal a process of territorialisation. What are the processesóenvisaged as spatial investmentsówhich, by producing exclusivity, demarcations and exclusions, fragment the urban space and its social fabric? Do the practices and discussions of the urban dwellers construct limited spaces, appropriated, identified and managed by communities (in other words, territories)? Dar es Salaam is often described as a diversified, relatively homogenous and integrating place. However, Is it not more appropriate to describe it as fragmented? as territorialisation can only occur through frequenting, management and localised investment, it is therefore through certain placesófirst shelter and residential area, then the school, daladala station, The fire hydrant And The quaysóthat the town is observed. This led to broach the question in the geographical sense of urban policy carried out since German colonisation to date. At the same time, The analysis of these developments allows for an evaluation of the role of the urban crisis And The responses it brings. In sum, The aim of this approach is to measure the impact of the uniqueness of the place on the current changes. On one hand, this is linked to its long-term insertion in the Swahili civilisation, and on the other, To its colonisation by Germany and later Britain and finally, To the singularity of the post-colonial path. This latter is marked by an alternation of Ujamaa with Structural Adjustment Plans applied since 1987. How does this remarkable political culture take part in the emerging city today? This book is a translation of De Dar es Salaam ‡ Bongoland: Mutations urbaines en Tanzanie, published by Karthala, Paris in 2006.
Author: Delphine Fongang Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 1498563848 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 175
Book Description
The Postcolonial Subject in Transit presents in-depth analyses of the complex transitional migratory identities evident in emerging African diasporic writings. It provides insights into the hybridity of the migrant experience, where the migrant struggles to negotiate new cultural spaces. It shows that while some migrants successfully adapt and integrate into new Western locales, others exist at the margins unable to fully negotiate cultural difference. The diaspora becomes a space for opportunities and economic mobility, as well as alienation and uncertainties. This illuminates the heterogeneity of the African diasporic narrative; expanding the dialogue of the diaspora, from one of simply loss and melancholia to self-realization and empowerment.
Author: James Hodapp Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1501342592 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 329
Book Description
African literature has never been more visible than it is today. Whereas Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o defined a golden generation of African writers in the 20th century, a new generation of “Afropolitan” writers including Chimamanda Adichie, Teju Cole, Taiye Selasi, and NoViolet Bulawayo have taken the world by storm by snatching up prestigious awards and selling millions of copies of their works. But what is the new, increasingly fashionable and marketable, Afropolitan vision of Africa's place in the world that they offer? How does it differ from that of previous generations? Why do some dissent? Afropolitanism refuses to reinforce images of Africa in world media as merely poor, war-torn, diseased, and constantly falling into chaos. By complicating the image of Africa as a hapless victim, Afropolitanism focuses on the wide-ranging influence Africa has on the world. However, some have characterized this kind of writing as light, populist fare that panders to Western audiences. Afropolitan Literature as World Literature examines the controversy surrounding Afropolitan literature in light of the unprecedented circulation of culture made possible by globalization, and ultimately argues for expanding its geographic and temporal boundaries.
Author: Robert Clarke Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107153395 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
This Companion addresses an exciting emerging field of literary scholarship that charts the intersections of postcolonial studies and travel writing.
Author: Roseann O'Reilly Runte Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1668023857 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
Profiles of some of the most inventive and creative Canadians and the ideas that are making Canada a leading nation in innovation. From saving lives to saving harvests... From discovering ancient diamonds to identifying the first exo-planet... From driverless cars to quantum computers... From Nobel laureates to your next-door neighbor... This book offers uplifting stories of innovative Canadians. Canadians Who Innovate includes two Nobel laureates, an astronaut, extraordinary business leaders, the godfathers of artificial intelligence, and top quantum experts, including the inventor of what may be the next quantum computer. It features profiles of the first director of engineering at Google, who is now working on nuclear fusion; a medical researcher who communicates on TikTok about the efficacy and potential for RNA vaccine technology; and a PhD in nuclear physics who has twice won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Meet the linguist who works with Indigenous people to make online dictionaries, an internationally consulted specialist on migration, an agri-tech investor, a world specialist on permafrost, and the expert in systems and number theory who has a way to fix health care. And don’t forget the engineer who grew human cells on apples, a feat that is leading to the creation of replacement organs that do not require donors—not to be confused with the aerospace technology developer who created a tethering system to clean up space debris and a 3-D printer that prints biological tissue. Featuring brilliant thinkers from coast to coast to coast, and others from around the world who now call Canada home, Canadians Who Innovate paints a promising picture of a cleaner, healthier, more innovative future for us all.
Author: Emily Brownell Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822987457 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
Gone to Ground is an investigation into the material and political forces that transformed the cityscape of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is both the story of a particular city and the history of a global moment of massive urban transformation from the perspective of those at the center of this shift. Built around an archive of newspapers, oral history interviews, planning documents, and a broad compendium of development reports, Emily Brownell writes about how urbanites navigated the state’s anti-urban planning policies along with the city’s fracturing infrastructures and profound shortages of staple goods to shape Dar’s environment. They did so most frequently by “going to ground” in the urban periphery, orienting their lives to the city’s outskirts where they could plant small farms, find building materials, produce charcoal, and escape the state’s policing of urban space. Taking seriously as historical subject the daily hurdles of families to find housing, food, transportation, and space in the city, these quotidian concerns are drawn into conversation with broader national and transnational anxieties about the oil crisis, resource shortages, infrastructure, and African socialism. In bringing these concerns together into the same frame, Gone to Ground considers how the material and political anxieties of the era were made manifest in debates about building materials, imported technologies, urban agriculture, energy use, and who defines living and laboring in the city.
Author: Esther Pujolràs-Noguer Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3031463455 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
This volume examines a selection of life writing in English by authors from the South West Indian Ocean, namely South Africa, East Africa, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. The two motifs that run through the chapters – mourning and resilience – are theoretical frameworks that have so far not been brought into conversation in this way. The combination of trauma studies and autobiographical analysis sharpens the focus of the discussions on Indian Ocean life writing, privileging an Indian Ocean imaginary that is transnational and cross-oceanic in its orientation and pointing to networks of connections that transcend the nation state, which is often the origin of trauma in the first place. Filling a gap in Indian Ocean studies in its close readings of trauma and resilience, the book also broadens perspectives on postcolonial life writing since little attention has been paid so far to Indian Ocean autobiographical literary products. By the same token, the volume also enriches the field of Indian Ocean literary studies by incorporating life writing as an aesthetic strategy which helps to configure Indian Ocean subjectivities.
Author: M.G. Vassanji
Author: M.G. Vassanji
Author: M.G. Vassanji
Author: Bernard Calas
Author: Delphine Fongang
Author: James Hodapp
Author: Robert Clarke
Author: Roseann O'Reilly Runte
Author: Emily Brownell
Author: Esther Pujolràs-Noguer