Research in African Literatures最新文献_第4页

Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison by Christopher N. Okonkwo (review) 《志趣相照:奇努亚·阿契贝和托妮·莫里森》克里斯托弗·n·奥孔科沃著(书评)

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.15

Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji

Reviewed by: Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison by Christopher N. Okonkwo Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison BY CHRISTOPHER N. OKONKWO U of Virginia P, 2022. xii + 297 pp. ISBN 9780813947112 e-book. Projecting the seemingly unforeseeable yet shared village-centric tropes in three novels each by Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison, Kindred Spirits yields a reimagining of both literary greats as kindred spirits. For Christopher N. Okonkwo, “[t]hose profound parallels in their personal and professional histories, artistic visions, and works warrant imagining them as kindred spirits” (6). Though separated by spatial and temporal barriers, both Achebe and Morrison are said to (re)connect culturally and intellectually via the mutual history of blackness. The four-chapter book “critically reconnects and celebrates” the duo of the Nigerian novelist and Man Booker Prize–winner Chinua Achebe and the African American writer and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (3–4). Okonkwo, who contrives the book as “merely the beginning of a rigorous and sustained Achebe-Morrison comparative scholarship,” anchors it on an overarching twofold goal: first, “to direct attention to certain disciplinarily significant relations between both authors”; second, “to synthesize a theoretical model with which . . . to elucidate the compelling inter-textualities of their fiction” (3). Unarguably, part of the book’s aim is recognizing and celebrating Morrison’s undeniable but unsung intellectual investment in, and indebtedness to, modern African literature and writers like Wole Soyinka, Ama Ata Aidoo, Cyprian Ekwens, and, particularly, Chinua Achebe. [End Page 180] Okonkwo demonstrates a thoroughness of Achebe-Morrison scholarship by drawing on scholars such as Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, M. M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Toyin Falola, Isidore Okpewho, Nkiru Nzegwu, Michel Foucault, etc., for historical, theoretical, and critical coverage of the study. He carefully sets the theoretical basis of the book in chapter one where he purposefully articulates the tenets of villagism by first repurposing Toni Morrison’s 1984 groundbreaking essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.” Morrison, in the essay, has proposed the presence of the ancestor or an ancestral figure. This proposition effloresces into villagism, which entails the idea that the village is not just a cultural context but also a theoretical model fit to tease out the similarities in the six trilogies of Achebe and Morrison. Characterization and aesthetics are the two ways, Okonkwo discerns, through which village tropes like “the ancestor,” “the past,” “generations,” generational “change,” and “the tragic” (41) manifest in the trilogies. As well as building on the contributions of West African scholars such as Ernest Emenyonu, George Nyamndi, Wendy Griswold, and Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi on the emergence of the village novel tradition in West Africa, Okonkwo heavily alludes to Achebe’s an

同族的灵魂:奇努阿·阿奇贝和托妮·莫里森作者:克里斯托弗·n·奥康科沃，弗吉尼亚大学，2022年。xii + 297页。ISBN 9780813947112电子书。奇努阿·阿契贝和托妮·莫里森的三部小说中都有看似不可预见但却共享的以村庄为中心的比喻，《同族精神》让我们重新想象了这两位文学巨子的同族精神。对于Christopher N. Okonkwo来说，“他们在个人和职业历史、艺术视野和作品上的深刻相似之处，使他们有理由把他们想象成志同道合的人”(6)。尽管被空间和时间的障碍分开，据说阿奇贝和莫里森都通过共同的黑人历史在文化和智力上(重新)联系在一起。这本四章的书“批判性地重新连接并颂扬”尼日利亚小说家、布克奖得主奇努阿·阿切比和非裔美国作家、诺贝尔奖得主托妮·莫里森(3-4)。奥康科沃把这本书定义为“严谨而持久的阿奇比-莫里森比较学术研究的开端”，并将其定位在一个重要的双重目标上:首先，“将注意力引向两位作者之间某些学科上的重要关系”;第二，“综合一个理论模型……(3)无可争议的是，这本书的部分目的是承认和颂扬莫里森对现代非洲文学和作家(如沃勒·索因卡、阿玛塔·艾杜、塞普里安·埃文斯，尤其是奇努阿·阿奇贝)不可否认但默默无闻的智力投入和贡献。[End Page 180] Okonkwo通过引用Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, M. M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Toyin Falola, Isidore Okpewho, Nkiru Nzegwu, Michel Foucault等学者对该研究的历史，理论和批评报道，展示了阿奇贝-莫里森奖学金的彻全性。他在第一章中仔细地设置了这本书的理论基础，他首先重新利用了托尼·莫里森(Toni Morrison) 1984年的开创性论文《扎根:祖先作为基础》(Rootedness: the Ancestor as Foundation)，有目的地阐明了乡村主义的原则。莫里森在文章中提出了祖先或祖先形象的存在。这一命题发展为乡村主义，认为乡村不仅是一种文化背景，也是一种理论模型，适合梳理阿契贝和莫里森的六部三部曲的相似性。Okonkwo认为，人物塑造和美学是两种方式，通过这两种方式，“祖先”、“过去”、“世代”、“世代变化”和“悲剧”等乡村隐喻在三部曲中得以体现。除了借鉴Ernest Emenyonu、George Nyamndi、Wendy Griswold和Taiwo adunji Osinubi等西非学者对西非乡村小说传统兴起的贡献外，Okonkwo还大量引用了Achebe和Morrison的论文、访谈和公开演讲，将乡村主义理论化。从本质上讲，乡村主义与其说是一个新的理论框架，不如说是对格里斯沃尔德理论化的西非乡村小说研究的扩展或改进。第二章到第四章是分析性的。在第二章中，Okonkwo探讨了“与乡村主义相关的主题”(12)，包括迷信、魔法、作为守护者的祖先，以及阿契贝的《分崩离析》和莫里森的《宠儿》中的公共生活方式。这两种文本都受到历史的启发，被称为“乡村小说”(52)。Okonkwo认为，作者们重新审视了大西洋两岸的非洲后裔是如何被殖民主义和奴隶制的悲剧所困扰的——“过去”(171页)——尽管被这些创伤经历撕裂，但他们仍然有着血缘关系。与此同时，阿契贝的《不再安逸》和莫里森的《爵士乐》的“空间背景和时间联系”(131)是第三章的重点，该章恰如其分地探讨了这两部小说的跨大西洋联盟。Okonkwo认为，作者对伦敦和利物浦等奴隶制遗址的暗示激发了非洲人和非裔美国人的创伤记忆。这些文本以这些主要城市为背景，代表了“新尼日利亚/新非洲”和“新黑人”成员，他们迎合了乡村心态。于是，人们抵制“对他们所谓可耻的非洲村庄传统和痛苦的种族过去的压制”。[因此，]村庄，‘过去’得以幸存”(144页)。在《神之箭》的第四章中，奥康科沃请求亨利·路易斯·盖茨(Henry Louis Gates)挖掘出一个巨大的“关系网”(185)……

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引用次数: 0

An Onomastic Analysis of Character Names in Bessie Head’s Maru and When Rain Clouds Gather 贝西·海德的《马鲁》和《当雨云聚集》中人物名字的象形分析

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905364

Goabilwe Nnanishie Ramaeba, Wazha Lopang

ABSTRACT: This literary onomastics paper explores character naming in two of Bessie Head’s novels, namely, When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru , both set in villages of Botswana. The purpose is to illustrate how the author uses character names to advance her themes and storylines. The paper relies heavily on the lexical transparency of the names from a structural linguistics perspective and on the sociocultural contexts of the names from a sociolinguistics perspective. The analysis reveals that Head’s choice of character names is intentional and deliberate, meant to achieve a specific purpose, and this is reflective of the process of names and naming in real life scenarios, particularly in the African context. The names mirror the sociocultural contexts of the characters and in the process reveal their personalities, physical attributes, and the types of relationships they have with other characters. The paper concludes that Head employs a lot of symbolism and irony in naming her characters, powerful features that help to effectively communicate her themes.

摘要:本文探讨了贝西·黑德的两部小说《当雨云聚集》和《玛鲁》中的人物命名，这两部小说都以博茨瓦纳的村庄为背景。目的是说明作者如何使用人物的名字来推进她的主题和故事情节。本文主要从结构语言学的角度研究人名的词汇透明度，从社会语言学的角度研究人名的社会文化背景。分析表明，海德对人物名字的选择是有意的，是经过深思熟虑的，是为了达到特定的目的，这反映了现实生活场景中的名字和命名过程，特别是在非洲的背景下。这些名字反映了人物的社会文化背景，并在此过程中揭示了他们的个性、身体特征以及他们与其他角色的关系类型。论文的结论是，海德在给角色命名时使用了大量的象征主义和反讽，这些有力的特征有助于有效地传达她的主题。

引用次数: 0

South-South Triangulations: Fabric, Marriage, and Decolonization in Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley 南南三角:拉蒂法·扎亚特的《敞开的门》和莱拉·阿布莱拉的《歌词小巷》中的结构、婚姻和非殖民化

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905359

Nada Ayad

ABSTRACT: Heeding Arabic literary scholar Waïl Hassan’s call for literary comparatist work that does not center the United States or Europe, in this article, I investigate two novels of the Global South set in the same political moment of decolonization. Examining the Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door (1960) and the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s novel Lyrics Alley (2010), I study the significance of women’s sartorial choices, what these sartorial choices symbolize within the central marriage plots, and what both reveal about the charged political fabric in the country in which each text is set—the early years of the 1950s in which Egypt gained independence from British colonial rule but before Sudan’s independence from Anglo-Egyptian co-rule. I contend that Al-Zayyat’s work invites a dynamism to women’s writing history and reveals an indigenous epistemology, while Aboulela’s novel centers the quotidian only to uphold colonial supremacy.

摘要:为响应阿拉伯文学学者Waïl Hassan对不以美国或欧洲为中心的文学比较研究的呼吁，本文考察了以非殖民化政治时刻为背景的两部全球南方小说。通过考察埃及作家拉蒂法·扎耶特的《敞开的门》(1960)和苏丹作家莱拉·阿布拉拉的小说《歌词街》(2010)，我研究了女性服装选择的意义，这些服装选择在中心婚姻情节中象征着什么，以及这两本书所揭示的国家政治结构的变化——20世纪50年代早期，埃及从英国殖民统治中独立出来，但在苏丹从英埃共同统治中独立出来之前。我认为Al-Zayyat的作品为女性写作历史注入了活力，揭示了一种本土认识论，而Aboulela的小说以日常生活为中心，只是为了维护殖民霸权。

引用次数: 0

Dictatorship, Trauma, and Scriptotherapy in Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters 雷米·拉吉的《笑声的收获》中的独裁、创伤和脚本疗法

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905362

Kazeem Adebiyi-Adelabu

ABSTRACT: This article examines how Remi Raji, a third-generation Nigerian poet, reenacts the social pains and “dis-eases” of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria in A Harvest of Laughters as traumatogenic, as well as how the poet writes himself out of the trauma. While the article espouses the extant critical notion that the poet offers laughter to the victims of structural violence, social pains, and “dis-eases” of the military rule era in the country as a balm, it complicates the view by arguing that the poet’s versification in the volume and, more importantly, his infatuated exploration of laughter is readable as scriptotherapy. The poems titled “Introit,” “I rise now,” “Gift,” “Black Laughter,” “Silence,” “Silence II,” “Orphan Cry”, and “Harvest I–VI” are used to demonstrate this. The analysis draws anchor from Laura Brown’s and Stef Craps’s conceptions of trauma and Geri Chavis’s and some other psychological therapists’ insights on writing and therapy.

摘要:本文探讨了尼日利亚第三代诗人雷米·拉吉在《笑声的收获》中如何再现尼日利亚军事独裁时代的社会痛苦和“疾病”，以及诗人如何从创伤中走出。虽然这篇文章支持现存的批评观点，即诗人为该国军事统治时代的结构性暴力、社会痛苦和“疾病”的受害者提供笑声作为一种安慰，但它认为诗人在书中的诗句，更重要的是，他对笑声的迷恋探索是可读的剧本疗法，从而使观点复杂化。《Introit》、《我现在站起来》、《Gift》、《黑色的笑声》、《Silence》、《Silence II》、《Orphan Cry》、《Harvest I - vi》等诗都是为了说明这一点。这一分析从劳拉·布朗和斯蒂夫·克拉普斯对创伤的概念，以及杰里·查维斯和其他一些心理治疗师对写作和治疗的见解中汲取灵感。

引用次数: 0

Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities by Niyi Afolabi (review) 《重新安置神圣:非洲神灵与巴西文化杂交》作者:Niyi Afolabi

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905370

Cajetan Iheka

Reviewed by: Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities by Niyi Afolabi Cajetan Iheka Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities BY NIYI AFOLABI SUNY Press, 2022. 366 pp. ISBN 9781438490717 cloth. Niyi Afolabi opens his fascinating study Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Identities with the story of his first trip to Brazil and the shock at the Africanist presence and religious consciousness in Bahia. Afolabi recalls his befuddlement at the common use of Yoruba language and consecration of Yoruba deities as spiritual anchors in Bahia. Afolabi’s confusion results from the denigration of the same cultural practices—indigenous language and spiritual practices—in Nigeria in the face of colonial modernity, a development that continues today. In Brazil, however, these African divinities are vibrant cultural [End Page 177] expressions mobilized for survival in a New World context steeped in violence for African descendants since slavery. Relocating the Sacred is a captivating study of traveling theory and praxis, of how Afro-Brazilians relocated religious and cultural practices to cope with the dehumanizing impacts of slavery and ongoing marginalization within a Brazil wracked by continuous legacies of slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Afolabi’s emphasis on “relocating” is a particular strength of his book as the term locates intentional agency in the hands of the Africans whose cultural heritage was not tabula rasa, as the colonizers would love to claim. The relocative thrust of the book reclaims a culturally rich society that the Afro-Brazilians were displaced from even as it emphasizes the work of syncretism that attended the migration of sacred practices to the Brazilian space. In Brazil, these sacred practices not only allowed for grappling with the traumas of forced displacement; they also offered a technology for dealing with the hauntings of the slavery past in the Brazilian state’s treatment of its Black citizens. As he has done in previous studies, Afolabi takes Brazil’s myth of racial democracy to task for excluding Afro-Brazilians in an equitable conceptualization of the nation and citizenry. As Afolabi asks in Relocating the Sacred, “why do these African cultural practices persist amidst the onslaught of globalization? Within a context of ongoing racial discrimination and demonization of Blackness, what roles exist for identifiable religious-cum-sacred rituals?” (3). Afolabi’s study argues “that the tension between the theory of racial democracy and the practice of white supremacy in Brazil opens the space for syncretism of cultures, including African sacred practices” (3). Afolabi locates three specific locations of culture for this syncretism, namely ritual altar, literature, and carnival culture. Each of the three sections of the book investigates each site of cultural production, showing how the “syncretism of African sacred practic

Niyi Afolabi的《重新安置神圣:非洲神灵与巴西文化杂交》，SUNY出版社，2022年。366页。ISBN 9781438490717布。Niyi Afolabi以他第一次巴西之旅的故事，以及对巴伊亚州非洲人的存在和宗教意识的震惊，开启了他迷人的研究《重新安置神圣:非洲神与巴西文化认同》。阿弗拉比回忆起他对巴伊亚普遍使用约鲁巴语言和将约鲁巴神奉为精神锚的困惑。阿弗拉比的困惑源于同样的文化习俗——土著语言和精神习俗——在尼日利亚面对殖民现代性时的诋毁，这种发展一直持续到今天。然而，在巴西，这些非洲神是充满活力的文化表达，为非洲后裔在奴隶制以来充满暴力的新世界背景下的生存而动员起来。《重新安置神圣》是一本关于旅行理论和实践的引人入胜的研究，讲述了巴西黑人如何重新安置宗教和文化习俗，以应对奴隶制的非人性化影响，以及在巴西持续受到奴隶制、殖民主义和全球化遗产的破坏。阿弗拉比对“重新安置”的强调是他的书中一个特别的优势，因为这个词把有意的代理权放在了非洲人的手中，而这些非洲人的文化遗产并不像殖民者喜欢宣称的那样是白板的。这本书的重新定位强调了一个文化丰富的社会，非洲裔巴西人被迫离开了这个社会，尽管它强调了宗教活动向巴西空间迁移的融合工作。在巴西，这些神圣的做法不仅有助于应对被迫流离失所的创伤;他们还提供了一种技术来处理巴西国家对待黑人公民的奴隶制过去的阴影。正如他在之前的研究中所做的那样，阿弗拉比将巴西种族民主的神话归咎于将非裔巴西人排除在公平的国家和公民概念之外。正如阿弗拉比在《重新安置神圣》一书中所问的那样，“为什么这些非洲文化习俗在全球化的冲击下依然存在?”在持续的种族歧视和黑人妖魔化的背景下，可识别的宗教和神圣仪式存在什么作用?(3). Afolabi的研究认为“巴西种族民主理论与白人至上实践之间的紧张关系为文化的融合打开了空间，包括非洲的神圣实践”(3)。Afolabi为这种融合定位了三个特定的文化位置，即仪式祭坛、文学和狂欢文化。书的三个部分中的每一部分都调查了文化生产的每个地点，展示了“非洲神圣实践的融合如何提供了一种应对持久种族主义的技术，提供了一种抵抗白人霸权的策略，并作为一种正在进行的非殖民化努力的工具”(3)。这本书的有力论点在十个细致、研究充分的章节中展开。第一章提供了一个必要的历史背景，以欣赏神圣的从非洲到巴西的迁移。这一章理所当然地将巴伊亚作为文化的十字路口——世俗和神圣，以及天主教和非洲宗教的交汇点——导致了协商的杂交。这一章展示了植根于巴伊亚州的文化组织和宗教习俗，包括Ile Aiye非洲嘉年华集团和Filhos de Gandhi，后者作为candomblaise的房子。这些组织通过“一贯地展示非洲价值观和非洲天主教主题”来促进神圣的迁移(46)。第二章博学而平衡，重新评价了法国人类学家皮埃尔·维杰的生活和事业，阿弗拉比认为他是“神谕之谜”和“神性矛盾的化身”(56)。在承认Verger对保存散居的约鲁巴文化的重要贡献和他的摄影才华的同时，Afolabi提请注意同样重要的殖民研究实践问题。Afolabi仔细研究了像Verger这样的外国人有特权进入大多数非洲人无法进入的神圣空间，Verger和其他研究人员对非洲知识的殖民征用，以及在这种知识生产的殖民经济中，非洲人被降格为“线人”。[End Page 178]如果Verger的作品在…

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引用次数: 0

South-South Triangulations: Fabric, Marriage, and Decolonization in Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley 南南三角:拉蒂法·扎亚特的《敞开的门》和莱拉·阿布莱拉的《歌词小巷》中的结构、婚姻和非殖民化

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905358

Nada Ayad

ABSTRACT: Heeding Arabic literary scholar Waïl Hassan’s call for literary comparatist work that does not center the United States or Europe, in this article, I investigate two novels of the Global South set in the same political moment of decolonization. Examining the Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door (1960) and the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s novel Lyrics Alley (2010), I study the significance of women’s sartorial choices, what these sartorial choices symbolize within the central marriage plots, and what both reveal about the charged political fabric in the country in which each text is set—the early years of the 1950s in which Egypt gained independence from British colonial rule but before Sudan’s independence from Anglo-Egyptian co-rule. I contend that Al-Zayyat’s work invites a dynamism to women’s writing history and reveals an indigenous epistemology, while Aboulela’s novel centers the quotidian only to uphold colonial supremacy.

摘要:为响应阿拉伯文学学者Waïl Hassan对不以美国或欧洲为中心的文学比较研究的呼吁，本文考察了以非殖民化政治时刻为背景的两部全球南方小说。通过考察埃及作家拉蒂法·扎耶特的《敞开的门》(1960)和苏丹作家莱拉·阿布拉拉的小说《歌词街》(2010)，我研究了女性服装选择的意义，这些服装选择在中心婚姻情节中象征着什么，以及这两本书所揭示的国家政治结构的变化——20世纪50年代早期，埃及从英国殖民统治中独立出来，但在苏丹从英埃共同统治中独立出来之前。我认为Al-Zayyat的作品为女性写作历史注入了活力，揭示了一种本土认识论，而Aboulela的小说以日常生活为中心，只是为了维护殖民霸权。

引用次数: 0

Udje, Ecosystem, and Sustainability Udje，生态系统和可持续性

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905361

Tanure Ojaide

ABSTRACT: Recent scholarly publications on African literature discuss the African environment and the need to “naturalize” it as if the continent’s environment is not or has not been “natural.” By looking at only recent written African literature and not studying African oral literatures, the works on environmentalism have missed important parts of what the African creative mind has done before later postcolonial writers started. It is this gap that this essay on udje, an African oral poetic genre, is used to fill. This essay looks at how African oral poets made use of land that embraces bush/forests and water with its resources to express the congenial relationship between human and nonhuman beings. The physical environment becomes a repository of tropes to express human relationships and existential ideas. Oral literatures such as udje expressed a complementarity that newer literary works lack and so should be studied for a holistic environmental condition and solution.

摘要:最近关于非洲文学的学术出版物讨论了非洲的环境以及将其“自然化”的必要性，就好像非洲大陆的环境不是或不是“自然”的一样。由于只看最近的非洲书面文学，而不研究非洲口头文学，有关环保主义的著作错过了非洲创造性思维在后来的后殖民作家开始之前所做的重要部分。这篇关于udje的文章，一种非洲口头诗歌体裁，就是用来填补这一空白的。这篇文章着眼于非洲的口头诗人如何利用包含灌木/森林和水的土地及其资源来表达人类和非人类之间的和谐关系。物理环境成为表达人际关系和存在主义思想的隐喻库。像乌济这样的口头文学表达了一种较新的文学作品所缺乏的互补性，因此应该为整体的环境条件和解决方案而进行研究。

引用次数: 0

Udje, Ecosystem, and Sustainability Udje，生态系统和可持续性

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.05

Tanure Ojaide

ABSTRACT: Recent scholarly publications on African literature discuss the African environment and the need to “naturalize” it as if the continent’s environment is not or has not been “natural.” By looking at only recent written African literature and not studying African oral literatures, the works on environmentalism have missed important parts of what the African creative mind has done before later postcolonial writers started. It is this gap that this essay on udje, an African oral poetic genre, is used to fill. This essay looks at how African oral poets made use of land that embraces bush/forests and water with its resources to express the congenial relationship between human and nonhuman beings. The physical environment becomes a repository of tropes to express human relationships and existential ideas. Oral literatures such as udje expressed a complementarity that newer literary works lack and so should be studied for a holistic environmental condition and solution.

摘要:最近关于非洲文学的学术出版物讨论了非洲的环境以及将其“自然化”的必要性，就好像非洲大陆的环境不是或不是“自然”的一样。由于只看最近的非洲书面文学，而不研究非洲口头文学，有关环保主义的著作错过了非洲创造性思维在后来的后殖民作家开始之前所做的重要部分。这篇关于udje的文章，一种非洲口头诗歌体裁，就是用来填补这一空白的。这篇文章着眼于非洲的口头诗人如何利用包含灌木/森林和水的土地及其资源来表达人类和非人类之间的和谐关系。物理环境成为表达人际关系和存在主义思想的隐喻库。像乌济这样的口头文学表达了一种较新的文学作品所缺乏的互补性，因此应该为整体的环境条件和解决方案而进行研究。

引用次数: 0

Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf (review) 当代津巴布韦英语文学的流动性:跨越边界，超越边界作者:马格达莱纳·法兹格拉夫(书评)

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.13

Nhlanhla Dube

Reviewed by: Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf Nhlanhla Dube Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries BY MAGDALENA PFALZGRAF Routledge, 2022. 260 pp. ISBN 9780367637811 cloth. Zimbabwean literary criticism is effectively in the doldrums. This is not to say that creative writers are not producing exceptional content. Rather, the Zimbabwean academy is failing to diligently appraise and survey relevant and topical fields in the canon. The many nonplussed scholarly attempts that lack critical insight and bonhomie have only made the situation worse. Magdalena Pfalzgraf’s book Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature is a breath of fresh air. Pfalzgraf’s monograph makes an astute contribution to literary scholarship focused on Zimbabwean literature. Pfalzgraf expatiates migration as the number one issue that has beleaguered both the nation and its literature since the early 2000s to date. [End Page 175] Pfalzgraf has characterized this period as being a state of “large scale out-migration” (5). The Zimbabwean crisis of the early 2000s led to a spike in migration as people made their way overseas to attempt to find clean running water, consistent electricity, and food. “Labor migration to South Africa was so pervasive that it became an engrained part of Zimbabwean life, and it also formed a collective imaginary which persists in contemporary representations of migration to South Africa” (25). Pfalzgraf explores how these struggles have been explored in creative fiction, and she honestly deliberates on their effects. Pfalzgraf starts off by pointing to the circuitous nature of migration and movement. “In the primary texts analysed here, we will come across numerous instances where being ‘on the move’ does not mean moving on, where movement is not necessarily mobilizing and where city dynamism is not always indicative of development. This contradictory dynamic is a central concern of this study” (2). Movement is thus anfractuous, and it does not result in liberation. The greener pastures sought by itinerants remain a dream deferred. This sometimes eventually results in migrants returning home in what has come to be called “diasporic return.” Zimbabwean literature thus becomes international in dimension. Writers also went abroad along with their compatriots. “The diasporic literary community is large and scattered across the globe: Chikwava and Huchu live in Britain, Bulawayo lives in the US and Lang in Australia, Mlalazi is based in Mexico” (9). Pfalzgraf points to the fact that we are beginning to see an internationalization of Zimbabwean literature. It is no longer enough to think of the canon of Zimbabwean literature as that which is only produced within its national geographical borders. And in turn, Zimbabweans do shape their new homes abroad and this can be seen in the “Hararization of London” (208

当代津巴布韦英语文学的流动性:跨越边界，超越边界(作者:Magdalena Pfalzgraf Nhlanhla Dube)260页。ISBN 9780367637811布。津巴布韦的文学批评实际上处于低迷状态。这并不是说有创意的作家不会产生出色的内容。更确切地说，津巴布韦的学院没有认真评估和调查经典中相关的和热门的领域。许多缺乏批判性洞察力和温和态度的令人困惑的学术尝试只会使情况变得更糟。Magdalena Pfalzgraf的书《当代津巴布韦文学中的流动性》是一股清新的空气。Pfalzgraf的专著对专注于津巴布韦文学的文学奖学金做出了精明的贡献。Pfalzgraf将移民问题阐述为自21世纪初以来困扰德国及其文学的头号问题。Pfalzgraf将这一时期描述为“大规模外迁”(5)。21世纪初的津巴布韦危机导致移民激增，人们纷纷前往海外寻找清洁的自来水、稳定的电力和食物。“向南非的劳工移民是如此普遍，以至于它成为津巴布韦人生活中根深蒂固的一部分，它也形成了一种集体想象，这种想象在当代对南非移民的描述中持续存在”(25)。Pfalzgraf探讨了这些斗争是如何在创造性小说中被探索的，她诚实地思考了它们的影响。Pfalzgraf首先指出了迁徙和运动的迂回本质。“在这里分析的主要文本中，我们会遇到许多例子，在这些例子中，‘移动’并不意味着前进，移动不一定是动员，城市活力并不总是代表发展。”这种矛盾的动态是本研究的中心关注点”(2)。因此，运动是错综复杂的，它不会导致解放。游民们追求的绿色牧场仍然是一个被推迟的梦想。这有时最终导致移民返回家园，这被称为“散居式回归”。津巴布韦文学因此在维度上变得国际化。作家们也和他们的同胞一起出国。“散居的文学社群很大，分散在全球各地:奇克瓦瓦和胡楚住在英国，布拉瓦约住在美国，朗住在澳大利亚，姆拉拉齐住在墨西哥”(9)。Pfalzgraf指出，我们开始看到津巴布韦文学的国际化。认为津巴布韦文学的经典只在其国家地理边界内产生是不够的。反过来，津巴布韦人确实在国外塑造了他们的新家，这可以从布莱恩·奇克瓦瓦(Brian chikwaa)的小说《北哈拉雷》(Harare North)中看到。Pfalzgraf的专著是特别的，因为它处理了很少被研究的城市内移民概念的方式。人们对津巴布韦文学作品中描绘的更壮观的运动方面着迷。例如，越境者在穿越林波波河时被鳄鱼吃掉，或者有资质的前白领被迫在英国做苦役的故事。Pfalzgraf将我们的注意力转向“2000年后津巴布韦城市的反乌托邦形象”的隐藏复杂性和维度(49)。Pfalzgraf分析了Valerie Tagwira的《希望的不确定性》(2006)。主人公奥奈经常被困在阴暗的城市环境中。Mbare是一个破旧肮脏的城市，吸走了居民的快乐和生活。Onai通过移动和步行从Mbare到市中心来收回她在城市空间的权利。在小说中，奥奈“步行到非洲统一广场因此成为一种跨越首都地理中心的尝试，也成为一种象征性的权力中心”(67)。Pfalzgraf表明，流动和移民并不是护照持有者和越境者的专属职权。这种情况也可能发生在落后的城市。津巴布韦文学并没有省略那些关于运动的故事，这些故事是由那些被留下的虚构人物讲述的。Pflazgraf强调了在农村散步的重要性。

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引用次数: 0

And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell (review) 《我还是写了我的故事:作为女权主义的南非黑人女性小说》芭芭拉·博斯韦尔著(书评)

3区文学 0 LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN

Research in African Literatures

Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905372

Ellen A. Ahlness

Reviewed by: And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell Ellen A. Ahlness And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism BY BARBARA BOSWELL Wits UP, 2020. xix + 229 pp. ISBN 9781776146185 paper. In Gcina Mhlophe’s short story, “The Toilet,” a young woman living under the dehumanizing and brutal conditions of apartheid struggles to pursue her drive for writing poetry. She discovers a toilet in a park that is for whites only and goes on to turn this segregated space into a sanctuary for her to work on her poetry. While she temporarily finds safety and privacy in her new haven, the victory does not last long; she later returns to her newfound space to find the toilet locked, her access barred. From this short story, Barbara Boswell takes her own text’s title: upon losing access, the protagonist of the short story defiantly heads to a bench and writes her story anyway. The determination captured within this line well-articulates the underlying drive that Boswell seems compelled to capture in her analysis of ten black women fiction writers. Throughout the book, Boswell seems driven to challenge the reduction of women, minority, and intersectional authors to genre writers—those whose powerful stories are nonetheless reduced to context-informed products—to develop in readers a greater appreciation for the worlds created within and across their published works. Depending on readers’ familiarity with South African writers, the discussed authors—Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Zoë Wicomb, Sindiwe Magona, Bessie Head, Gcina Mhlophe, Yvette Christiansë, Rayda Jacobs, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner—may or may not be of high familiarity. Regardless of readers’ own familiarity, Boswell defends her position in discussing this varied selection of women: each represents some kind of “first” in literary history in the South African context and consequently has a unique influence on their political, social, and national landscapes. Yet even coming from the South African context, their impact is not bound by borders; their influence, Boswell positions, is also felt globally as seminal works developed from 1975 to 2012. [End Page 182] And Wrote My Story Anyway evolved out of Boswell’s PhD thesis, driven by a personal and intellectual curiosity: why did she, even as a literary scholar, see and know so few works of fiction by black women writers? This inquiry led to a deeper investigation of the structural conditions that cumulate to work against black women who would be published. The driving question that informs the book’s structure is a query into what can be learned: what can we—as readers, researchers, and scholars—learn from black women, who represent some of those most negatively impacted by apartheid and the legacy of colonialism? Boswell considers literary work as a theoretical body that suggests a direction for developing the foundations and premise

书评:《无论如何我都写了我的故事:作为女权主义的南非黑人女性小说》作者:芭芭拉·博斯韦尔艾伦·阿内斯《无论如何我都写了我的故事:作为女权主义的南非黑人女性小说》作者:芭芭拉·博斯韦尔19 + 229页。ISBN 9781776146185论文。在吉娜·马洛夫(gina Mhlophe)的短篇小说《厕所》(The Toilet)中，一位年轻女子生活在种族隔离制度下不人道和残酷的环境中，努力追求自己写诗的动力。她在公园里发现了一个仅供白人使用的厕所，并将这个隔离的空间变成了她创作诗歌的避难所。虽然她暂时在她的新避风港找到了安全和隐私，但胜利并没有持续太久;后来，她回到新开的房间，发现厕所被锁上了，她无法进入。从这个短篇故事中，芭芭拉·博斯韦尔取了她自己的标题:在失去访问权后，短篇故事的主角毅然决然地走向长椅，继续写她的故事。在这句话中捕捉到的决心很好地表达了Boswell在她对十位黑人女性小说作家的分析中似乎不得不捕捉到的潜在动力。在整本书中，博斯韦尔似乎在挑战将女性、少数族裔和跨领域作家贬为类型作家的现象——这些作家的强大故事被贬为背景信息产品——以培养读者对其出版作品中所创造的世界的更大欣赏。根据读者对南非作家的熟悉程度，所讨论的作者——米利亚姆·塔拉、劳蕾塔·恩科博、法丽达·卡罗迪亚、艾格尼丝·萨姆、Zoë威库姆、辛迪维·马戈娜、贝西·海德、吉娜·马洛芙、伊维特Christiansë、蕾达·雅各布斯、卡吉索·莱塞戈·莫洛佩和祖基斯瓦·万纳——可能是也可能不是很熟悉。不管读者自己是否熟悉，Boswell在讨论这些不同的女性选择时为自己的立场辩护:在南非的背景下，每个女性都代表了文学史上的某种“第一”，因此对他们的政治、社会和国家景观有着独特的影响。然而，即使来自南非的背景，它们的影响也不受国界的限制;博斯韦尔认为，从1975年到2012年，他们的影响也在全球范围内得到了体现。《我的故事是怎么写的》是由博斯韦尔的博士论文演变而来的，受个人和智力好奇心的驱使:为什么作为一个文学学者，她看到和知道的黑人女作家的小说作品如此之少?这项调查导致了对结构性条件的更深入的调查，这些条件累积起来不利于黑人妇女，这些调查将被发表。贯穿本书结构的主要问题是，我们可以从中学到什么:作为读者、研究人员和学者，我们可以从黑人女性身上学到什么?黑人女性是受种族隔离和殖民主义遗产影响最大的群体之一。博斯韦尔认为文学作品是一种理论体，它为建立在正义基础上的社会秩序的基础和前提的发展指明了方向。在整个思考过程中，Boswell认识到社会政治景观同时“他者”和反对作者，同时也形成了支持他们发展其抵抗性资源和语言的空间。在整个文本中，读者将对作者为了保持他们的声音、信息和文学抵抗而不得不走的狭窄道路产生敏锐的欣赏，即使他们在文学、出版和传播领域航行，积极地承诺他们的作品将被分发或接收。从历史上看，南非出版界一直由白人的声音主导;博斯韦尔对各种各样的黑人女性作家的叙述促使人们对这些作家在他们的领域和国家中开辟的空间深表赞赏。总的来说，这本书清晰的写作肯定会吸引领域和早期学者。这是一本通俗易懂的读物，以自然流畅的方式结合了女权主义批评和文学史。早期的学者和大学读者很可能会发现自己在学习之前从未接触过的黑人女性作家的作品(在博斯韦尔分析的主题中，这可能是制度和课程失败的结果)。当然，《无论如何我都写了我的故事》对南非和其他国家的读者来说仍然是一本及时而富有洞察力的读物。

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引用次数: 0