Search results: 295 results for “Wole Soyinka”
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295 results
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The Interpreters
The Interpreters
Wole Soyinka
$19.99Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka's debut novel tells the story of a group of friends facing political corruption and cultural uncertainty in post-independence Nigeria.
Friends since high school, Egbo, Bandele, Sagoe, Sekoni and Kola have returned to Lagos after studying abroad. As they navigate wild parties, affairs of the heart, philosophical debates, and professional dilemmas, they struggle to reconcile the cultural traditions and Western influences that have shaped them – and that still divide their country.
In The Interpreters, Soyinka deftly weaves memories of the past through scenes of the present as the friends move toward an uncertain future. The result is a vividly realised fictional world rendered in prose that pivots easily from satire to tragedy.
'No other writer has Soyinka's unique positioning in the political and cultural life of his nation.' Ben Okri
'Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian icon.' Guardian
'Elaborately, strikingly and indeed often beautifully written.' The Times -
Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think
Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think
$35.00Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldbuilding and to imagine new futures. This groundbreaking book explores the life of the forest in African fiction, showing how writers have used it to reinvent the novel’s formal, aesthetic, and political possibilities.
Ainehi Edoro argues that forests in African fiction are laboratories for unmaking and remaking the world, where writers break apart familiar forms to test alternate forms of life, knowledge, and power. Instead of treating the forest as a backdrop, these writers imagine it as a living structure: a space where politics, history, myth, violence, technology, the magical, and creativity animate fictional worlds. Spanning indigenous African narratives and contemporary science fiction, Forest Imaginaries traces the lineage of forest worlds in African literature: Chinua Achebe’s evil forest, the cosmic forest in Wọle Ṣóyínká’s mythic imagination, Thomas Mofolo’s forest of imperial dreams, Amos Tutuola’s endless fractal forest, and Nnedi Okorafor’s aquatic forest of new ecological futures. This book rethinks African literary history by showing how African writers draw on the forest―and the wealth of Indigenous ideas about time, space, and storytelling it conjures―to transform the novel’s aesthetic, political, and philosophical horizons.
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Convergence Problems
Convergence Problems
by Wole Talabi
$27.00Roundup pick From the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Nommo award nominated author of Shigidi and The Brass Head Of Obalufon comes a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice; constantly converging on our future selves. In “An Arc of Electric Skin,” a roadside mechanic seeking justice volunteers to undergo a procedure that will increase the electrical conductivity of his skin by orders of magnitude. In “Blowout,” a woman races against time and a previously undocumented geological phenomenon to save her brother on the surface of Mars. In “Ganger,” a young woman trapped in a city run by machines must transfer her consciousness into an artificial body and find a way to give her life purpose. In “Debut,” Nairobi-based technical support engineer tries to understand what is happening when an AI art system begins malfunctioning in ways that could change the world. The sixteen stories of Convergence Problems, which include work published for the first time in this collection, rare stories, and recently acclaimed work, showcase Talabi at his creative best: playful and profound, exciting and experimental, always interesting.
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PRE-ORDER: The Gèlè Gang: A Novel
PRE-ORDER: The Gèlè Gang: A Novel
$25.00The latest novel from Sefi Atta—the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Sefi Atta strikes a conversational tone in this lighthearted novel about a group of spirited fifty something Nigerian American women in Atlanta. Yinka, their self- professed rational friend, gives an account of how they tried to matchmake their twenty something daughters, didn’t get the results they expected, but discovered more about their daughters and each other.
With incredible wit, humor, and clear-sightedness, Sefi Atta has given us a brilliant novel about identity, belonging, and female friendships.
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Every Story Is a Love Story: A Novel
Every Story Is a Love Story: A Novel
$32.00From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers, a captivating novel about love lost—and the weight of regret
What if I’d never gotten into that car? What if I’d pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later?
Three years ago, Wolo’s pregnant wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future: the twins they were expecting, the PhD she was on the cusp of finishing, and the house they’d just bought in New Jersey. In the face of a loss that seemed insurmountable, Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life: he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. The grief that dogged him has, with time, become a little gentler.
Until a letter arrives one day, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. Wolo’s family pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from making further mention of it; his father’s second wife calls, from Cameroon, to tell him to destroy it. But Wolo ponders it for days, and ultimately agrees to meet with the woman who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman affects him in ways he had never imagined, and he begins to wonder if the long road to healing can be shared.
What do we owe to those who have hurt us? Are we defined by our worst moments and our deepest regrets? And, more than anything, can forgiveness ease our suffering? Moving and full of life, Every Story Is a Love Story charts the uneven path from heartbreak to healing.
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Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-colonialism, and the African World
Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-colonialism, and the African World
by Quito Swan
$27.00Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black is a compelling history of understudied anti-colonial movements in this region, exploring how indigenous Oceanic activists intentionally forged international connections with the African world in their fights for liberation.
Drawing from research conducted across Fiji, Australia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Britain, and the United States, Quito Swan shows how liberation struggles in Oceania actively engaged Black internationalism in their diverse battles against colonial rule. Pasifika Black features as its protagonists Oceania's many playwrights, organizers, religious leaders, scholars, Black Power advocates, musicians, environmental justice activists, feminists, and revolutionaries who carried the banners of Black liberation across the globe. It puts artists like Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal and her 1976 call for a Black Pacific into an extended conversation with Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific’s Amelia Rokotuivuna, Samoa’s Albert Wendt, African American anthropologist Angela Gilliam, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, West Papua’s Ben Tanggahma, New Caledonia’s Déwé Gorodey, and Polynesian Panther Will ‘Ilolahia. In so doing, Swan displays the links Oceanic activists consciously and painstakingly formed in order to connect Black metropoles across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. -
The Shipikisha Club
The Shipikisha Club
$27.95Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.
But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier—with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she’s pregnant on the same day of Doc’s unexpected death.
To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga’s proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society’s expectations that it is a wife’s duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband’s infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.
The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify—the maid, Kasunga’s mother, and Ntashé, Sali's fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali’s diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?
Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé, and Sali’s mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large—a must-read for fans of Peace Adzo Medie, Abi Daré, Tayari P. Jones, and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.
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No Disrespect
No Disrespect
Sister Souljah
$16.95From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, rapper, and activist--Sister Souljah uses her passionate voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any Black woman determined to keep her heart open and her integrity intact in modern America.
Each chapter of No Disrespect is devoted to someone who made a difference in Sister Souljah's life--from the mother who raised her to the men who educated (and mis-educated) her about love--and each bares a controversial truth about the Black condition in America: the disintegration of families; the unremitting combat between the sexes; and the thousand and one ways in which racism continues to circumscribe how Black people see themselves and treat one another.
The result is an outspoken and often courageous rejoinder to the pieties of race, class, and gender by a writer who is at once wise, bawdy, brutally funny, and as sensitive a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.
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Black Women In Bloom
Black Women In Bloom
Sold outBlack Women in Bloom is a limited-edition coffee table book celebrating the becoming journeys of Black women across the diaspora. Curated from Carefree’s archives (with new, never-published essays!) and edited by Carefree Magazine founder Anayo Awuzie, it is both a collectible art object and an intimate reading experience.
Featuring over 30 essays from Black women writers around the world, alongside photography and original illustrations from Black artists. Each chapter follows the six stages of growth inspired by the lifecycle of a flower: Seeds, Growth, Reproduction, Pollination, Thorns, and Blooming.
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The Challenge for Africa
The Challenge for Africa
$22.00In this groundbreaking work, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement offers a new perspective on the troubles facing Africa today. Too often these challenges are portrayed by the media in extreme terms connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai, the author of Unbowed, sees things differently, and here she argues for a moral revolution among Africans themselves. Illuminating the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, Maathai offers “hardheaded hope” and “realistic options” for change and improvement. She deftly describes what Africans can and need to do for themselves, stressing all the while responsibility and accountability. Impassioned and empathetic, The Challenge for Africa is a book of immense importance.
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Love, Me: A Letter to Black Women in a Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship
Love, Me: A Letter to Black Women in a Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship
Sold outIn searing dispatches, Love, Me is a timely affirmation for Black women in a world that has undervalued them for centuries.
"Thee Black woman’s story for this era. It is both political and personal. It is both timely and, quite frankly, overdue." —Sunny Hostin, Emmy Award-winning journalist
Will we ever get back the love we give? That’s what millions of Black women are asking. Whether it’s the men in our lives, our experiences in our workplaces, or America itself, the country we built, we are fighting for the consideration, kindness, and respect we are due.
Black women are being silenced. Our history is being whitewashed and our contribution downplayed. Efforts persist to reduce our existence entirely. We are fighting for love, our lives, and livelihoods while a burning America continues to stand on our shoulders as it has throughout time.
In Love, Me, Cross brings to life the souls of Black women today. In the face of a failing democracy, dwindling opportunity, and elusive love, she tells the story of how we, women of accomplishment and endurance, relentlessly use our humanity to preserve ourselves, our culture, and civilization.
Bold and provocative, Cross invites Black women to go from hopeless to hopeful as we fight to achieve our dreams, secure the love we deserve, and preserve the home we built. She argues that we must repair our personhood and society, and that starts with giving ourselves something to believe in. Cross takes us on an intimate journey through the internal and external battles we face, illuminating community and critiquing the politics of being a Black woman today.
With a blend of humor, pathos, and hard-hitting cultural analysis, Cross tackles issues like race, relationships, sex, family, economics, health, labor, and love. By bringing Black women to the forefront, she honors not just her story, but our story. -
PRE-ORDER: Another View: The Vibrant World of Contemporary Black Artists
PRE-ORDER: Another View: The Vibrant World of Contemporary Black Artists
$59.95An intimate look into the studios of twenty prominent Black artists working today, enlivening their art practice and creative lives through stunning photographs and exclusive interviews
‘Both a vital record of the present and a powerful testament to the legacies still being created.’ – Angela Bassett, actress, director, and producer
Another View: The Vibrant World of Contemporary Black Artists is a groundbreaking, intimate exploration of the studios, living spaces, and creative processes of twenty of today’s most notable Black artists. The book includes 150 never-before-published photographs taken by acclaimed artist Awol Erizku, presenting the ultimate behind-the-scenes tour of striking studios across the United States, works in progress by some of the world’s most creative people, and the objects and settings that inspire them. Exclusive profiles inspired by interviews with celebrated curator Isolde Brielmaier offer compelling personal advice and unique insights into the art world, giving readers an inside look at the role of art in society, perspectives on legacy, and what it means to be a Black artist today. An illuminating introduction by lauded scholar and critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the historical precedents and critical context that led to the exciting current moment of Black contemporary art in America.
Showcasing work across media – including painting, sculpture, textile, collage, photography, and more – the featured artists have won prestigious awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts grant, and are in the collections of leading institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Guggenheim. These artists represent a pivotal moment in American art history, where Black artists are gaining unprecedented institutional recognition and also fundamentally changing conversations about identity, history, and representation in contemporary art. This book captures a crucial juncture – not only showcasing the ways these artists think about their work, but also highlighting important, personal conversations about how their influence will shape the next generation of artists and the broader cultural landscape for decades to come.
Featured artists: Nina Chanel Abney; Derrick Adams; Sanford Biggers; Jordan Casteel; Nick Cave; Renee Cox; Leonardo Drew; Theaster Gates; Rashid Johnson; Titus Kaphar; Glenn Ligon; Kerry James Marshall; Xaviera Simmons; Lorna Simpson; Shinique Smith; Hank Willis Thomas; Mickalene Thomas; Nari Ward; Carrie Mae Weems; and Fred Wilson.
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