Kamau Brathwaite and the Gift of Ancestral Memory Philosopher, Edmund Burke once said, “… People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors” (www.brainyquote.com). In regards to Caribbean writers, one writer who it can be said is apt in the intricacies and also perpetuation of African ancestralism is Kamau Brathwaite. Kofi Anyidoho, presently a literature professor at the University of Ghana, in his article “Kamau Brathwaite and the Gift of Ancestral Memory” highlights in great details how Brathwaite’s looking back to the motherland greatly influences his work. In making his points Anyidoho uses inter-textual evidence and also views of persons with specialty in the same area. Structurally, the article is divided in three sections simplifying and zeroing on specific aspects that Anyidoho wants to highlight with great success. Additionally, his diction is indicative of a high academic standard and also of knowledge of African language and culture hence, in the end, one is forced to agree with him that the works of Brathwaite is heavily influenced by his time spent throughout the motherland and also areas of the Caribbean. In a nutshell, one can say that the article is like an explanatory essay in …show more content…
In doing so he mimics to a great extent the writing style of Brathwaite and also draws many references to sources of quality. In the end, one understands the awesomeness of Brathwaite’s journey through the motherland and the way it is express in his work and so can conclude with Anyihodo that he seems to have gotten the gift of ancestral memory i.e. an understanding of who we are made alive through
This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends.
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
I would then go into more depth about the differences and similarities in the essay. Although I could identify the concepts from the articles I wanted to talk about, I had trouble developing a thesis that would ask the next question.
It has been suggested that Olaudah Equiano lied about his birthplace in his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African. The question of Olaudah Equiano’s birth place, whether it be modern day Nigeria or South Carolina, has little effect on the historical significance of his “autobiography.” In this essay I will discuss the reasons scholars are questioning the authenticity of his works, the affect his work played in the slave trade, and the impact this accusation has on his life’s work.
The National Archives | Exhibitions & Learning online | Black presence | Africa and the Caribbean. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/africa_caribbean/africa_trade.htm
Susan Z. Andrade, ‘Adichie’s Genealogies: National and Feminine Novels’ in Research in African Literatures. p.94
In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it is shown that the African people had their own complex culture before the Europeans decided to "pacify" them. The idea that the dignity of these people has been greatly compromised is acknowledged in the essay "The Role of the Writer," which is explanatory of Achebe's novels. A writer trying to capture the truth of a situation that his readers may know little or nothing about needs a sense of history in order to appropriately address the topic. It is not enough "to beat" another writer to the issue. Writers should make the attempt to express a deeper understanding. Without proper mental investment in a written work, the product will be a shallow representation of what it is meant to convey.
Having the author’s purpose is vital to knowing how informative, opinionated, or factual the article ...
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, is certainly the world’s most widely read African novel; it focuses on the life of Okonkwo a respected male in the early 1800’s in the Umuofia tribe of the Igbo people. Things Fall Apart, has gained much acknowledgment and recognition by virtue of its unique portrayal of life in the early 1800’s in colonial Africa. It has sparked controversy and debate between scholars; as a result of it being written by an African in 1958, this type of writing had never been seen before. This particular controversy was actually what Chinua Achebe, a celebrated 20th century Nigerian novelist was anticipating, when he composed Things Fall Apart, to describe Nigerian culture and the clash between indigenous African cultures with the traditional European culture.
...toward the close of the novel that "He had only heard and seen the world as it had always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distances and time" (246). Ironically, though these transitions, changes in the specific vernacular or ritual may be significant from generation to generation, the underlying theme remains constant: we are inseparable from the universe. "I already heard these stories before... only thing is the names sound different" (260). Within the self imposed boundaries of the text, each story creates new space for thoughts and emotions which are common to the human condition. Perhaps because the story houses the possibility for our ultimate destruction or redemption, Silko describes the story, its creation, its meaning, as the defining moment of humanity.
The current study’s investigation of conception of time in literature restricts itself to Ngugi’s treatment of official histories and his project of reconstructing the same histories to foreground authentic African realities. The novelist demonstrates that history plays a central role in crafting a people’s identity in relation to other people in the world. Karega in Petals of Blood examines the history written by African scholars so as to expose its inauthenticity. He points out such history was mute on authentic Kenyan history and the role indigenous Kenyans played in the country’s liberation. This reveals the writer’s attempt to reconstruct the history of the people he mirrors in his texts. According to Ogude (1999), Ngugi wa Thiong’o posits narrative as an agent of history because it provides the space for challenging our notions for national identities, uses of history, and ways in which they are deployed in power contestation in
plays a big role in the way the article is presented and what angle it
The ocean is what connects the people of the Caribbean to their African descendants in and out of time. Through the water they made it to their respective islands, and they, personally, crafted it to be temporal and made it a point of reference. The ocean is without time, and a speaker of many languages, with respect to Natasha Omise’eke Tinsley’s Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic. The multilingualism of the ocean is reminiscent that there is no one Caribbean experience. The importance of it indicates that the Afro-Caribbean identity is most salient through spirituality. It should come to no surprise that Erzulie, a Haitian loa, is a significant part of the migration of bodies in Ana Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt. Ana Maurine Lara’s depiction
Chinua Achebe was an influential Nigerian author during the 1900’s who was credited with his three essays which have been fused together into the book “Home and Exile”. In his stories he discusses things such as his own Igbo people, the problems with colonialization, the strength that stories can have and many more topics. A big part of his essays are on his thoughts of colonialism, the impact it has had on his home of Nigeria, and how stories written by others either helped justify colonialism or rejected it. Chinua argues that stories have their own power to fight, and while stories themselves do not have the ability to directly fight colonialism; they do, however with their power of words, stories can motivate and encourage people to stand up against colonialism. In proving this thesis to be a true statement, I will be providing evidence of the how, why and the extent to which stories can fight colonialism.
Ngugi’s insistence on using his mother tongue as the principal um of his writing is not simply a reaction against Anglicisation; it is more about resurrecting the African soul from centuries of slavery and colonialism that left it spiritually empty, economically disenfranchised and politically marginalised. Ngugi believes that when you erase a people’s language, you erase their memory. And people without memories are rudderless, unconnected to their own histories and culture, mimics who have placed their memories in a “psychic tomb” in the mistaken belief that if they master their coloniser’s language, they will own it. Ngugi is convinced that by adopting foreign languages lock, stock and barrel, Africans are committing a “linguicide”, which,