In search of Africa
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
In search of Africa
Harvard University Press, 2000, c1998
1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. 279-282
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"There I was, standing alone, unable to cry as I said goodbye to Sidime Laye, my best friend, and to the revolution that had opened the door of modernity for me--the revolution that had invented me." This book gives us the story of a quest for a childhood friend, for the past and present, and above all for an Africa that is struggling to find its future.
In 1996 Manthia Diawara, a distinguished professor of film and literature in New York City, returns to Guinea, thirty-two years after he and his family were expelled from the newly liberated country. He is beginning work on a documentary about Sekou Toure, the dictator who was Guinea's first post-independence leader. Despite the years that have gone by, Diawara expects to be welcomed as an insider, and is shocked to discover that he is not.
The Africa that Diawara finds is not the one on the verge of barbarism, as described in the Western press. Yet neither is it the Africa of his childhood, when the excitement of independence made everything seem possible for young Africans. His search for Sidime Laye leads Diawara to profound meditations on Africa's culture. He suggests solutions that might overcome the stultifying legacy of colonialism and age-old social practices, yet that will mobilize indigenous strengths and energies.
In the face of Africa's dilemmas, Diawara accords an important role to the culture of the diaspora as well as to traditional music and literature--to James Brown, Miles Davis, and Salif Keita, to Richard Wright, Spike Lee, and the ancient epics of the griots. And Diawara's journey enlightens us in the most disarming way with humor, conversations, and well-told tales.
Table of Contents
Situation I: Sartre and African Modernism 1. In My Home 2. Williams Sassine on Afro-Pessimism Situation Situation II: Richard Wright and Modern Africa 3. Cemoko's Sekou Toure 4. Return Narratives Djibril Tamsir Niane's Sundiata Salif Keita's Mandjou Afro-Kitsch and Woodstock in Bamako Toumani Diabate: A Kora Master Situation III: Malcolm X: Conversionists versus Culturalists 5. The Shape of the Future Modernity Is in Evil Forest Culture and Nationalism as Resistance to Globalization The Markets in West Africa and the Devaluation of the CFA Franc How to Compete 6. Finding Sidime Laye 7. Africa's Art of Resistance Blinded by My Loss The Curse of the Masks The Fang Byeri Statue as Primitive Art Cheri Samba: The Stereotype Strikes Back Sidime Laye's Song of Resistance 8. Sidime Laye One Year Later Situation IV: Homeboy Cosmopolitan The Homeboy and the Myth of Cain The Black Man in Bondage: The Construction of Mobility in Superfly and Shaft Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It The 'Hood in Spike Lee's Cinema Homeboys and the Reclaiming of the Stereotype in Black Film Toward a New Common Ground and Mentality References Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
