& once again via & thanks to the great work ArabLit is doing: JUNE 15, 2019 More than 100 people were killed and hundreds injured in the government’s June 3 attack on a sit-in in Khartoum, where protesters were gathered to demand justice, accountability, and choice in their future governance. The sit-in site had also been a site for art: By Lemya Shammat Before it was brutally stormed at … Read more Against Erasure: Art and Sudan’s Sit-in
Via Arab LIterature (in English) & MLYNXQUALEY on MAY 26, 2016 • ( 0 ) Nadia Ghanem talks with Apic editions and Barzakh editions, two Algerian publishing houses trying to promote literary exhange in Africa: By Nadia Ghanem From Barzakh’s stand at the 2014 book fair in Algiers. From the publisher’s website. Last year, during the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made such … Read more ‘Lands in Solidarity’ and ‘Resonances’: Producing African Literatures in Algeria
The below is a summary of an article I came across via friends & Siji Jabbar. It is in the February issue of the New African (and draws on an interview given by Professor Mamadou Koulibaly, Speaker of the Ivorian National Assembly, Professor of Economics, and author of the book The Servitude of the Colonial Pact). Here is how Jabbar frames the argument: “Just before France conceded to African demands for independence in the … Read more How France lives off Africa with the Colonial Pact
The Book of North African Literature: Pierre Joris on Poetry and Miscegenation. By Orlando Reade. December 5 2013. A 743-page anthology of North African literature was published by the University of California last year. Ranging from documents made in sixth century Carthage to experimental prose published months after the 2011 uprisings, the Book of North African Literature is the fourth installment in the Poems for the Millenium, a series initiated in 1995 by Pierre … Read more Interview on Maghreb Anthology in “Africa Is A Country”
Below, the opening of Kwame Dawes’ article on Kofi Awoonor from Speakeasy Magazine. You can read the full article here. NAIROBI, Kenya–I will travel to Ghana to be present at the burial of Kofi Awoonor. I will because he is a great Ghanaian poet. I will because he is a remarkable African thinker and mentor. I will because he traveled to Jamaica from Ghana to bury my father, his dear … Read more Kwame Dawes on Kofi Awoonor
Continuing on my Mauritanian foray, here is a poem in my translation by Tene Youssouf Gueye, born in Kaédi, Mauritania in 1928 and who died in 1988 (for details see commentary below the poem). THE MEANING OF THE CIRCUS Distant carillons of the Great Copper Clock veiled echoes of bugles and the song of crowds (choir of great communal feasts, syncopated applause descending into the depths along green abysses) we climb … Read more A Poem by Tene Youssouf Gueye
One of the more interesting analyses of DSK’s activities: Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa May 24, 2011 By Greg Palast Greg Palast’s ZSpace Page / ZSpace Now that I’ve dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline, let’s drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s history of arrogant abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years. On Wednesday, the New York Times ran five – … Read more Greg Palast on How Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa
Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK): 03/01/2011 Large climate risks for African farmers: IPCC was on the right track Climate change poses severe risks to food production in many African countries. This statement of the last assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was attacked fiercely one year ago. Critics suggested this assessment lacked scientific foundation, trying to challenge the credibility … Read more Climate Risks for African farmers
One of my favorite New York presses is Archipelago Books, the most serious independent press publishing translations in this country right now. With the soccer world cup going on, Archipelago is doing a promotion — & believe you me, there is no better way to get you through some of the games or through the waiting for the next round, than by reading one or the other of their … Read more Archipelago's 2010 South African World Cup Promotion
From this week’s edition of signandsight, the opening paragraphs of an essay/reportage by Charlotte Wiedemann. The full piece is here : Scenes from the race for influence over Africa’s ancient written culture. The evening light throws pink feathers across the sky. A herd of goats sends dust spiralling into the air and as it settles, a sand-coloured twilight descends on the sand-coloured city. In front of the mud construction … Read more The scramble for Timbuktu & the Oldest Library South of the Sahara
