Education in Africa 
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| Title: | Africa's hidden histories: everyday literacy and making the self |
| Editor: | Barber, Karin |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Pages: | 451 |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | African expressive cultures |
| City of publisher: | Bloomington, IN |
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| ISBN: | 0253347297; 0253218438 |
| Geographic term: | Africa |
| Subjects: | writing literacy letters publishing colonial period historical sources |
| Abstract: | In an introduction, Hidden innovators in Africa, and fifteen essays this book examines small-scale print production (tracts, pamphlets, obituaries, notes on dreams and herbal medicines, tales and histories) and personal writings (diaries, letters, poems), many of the latter handwritten, produced in many parts of Africa, predominantly in the colonial period. Part One: Diaries, letters, and the constitution of the self, contains discussions of the diaries in English of an Akan catechist and teacher (Ghana), the diaries in English of a Yoruba schoolmaster (Nigeria), the letters, pamphlets, and legal correspondence of a Xhosa woman herbalist (South Africa), a circle of independence-minded letter-writers in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), letters written by working-class black South Africans (mainly migrants), a diary of visions experienced by a Baptist preacher in a small village near Durban (South Africa), and letters used in a paternity case in Kenya. Part Two: Reading cultures, publics, and the press, has articles on literary activity in colonial Ghana, 'The Bantu World' newspaper which was printed in Johannesburg (South Africa), the propensity to quote Shakespeare among South African leaders and the influence of the mission schools, the vicissitudes of a Kikuyu newspaper ('Mumenyereri') in pre-Mau Mau Kenya, and the memoirs and newspaper writings and columns of Mercy Ffoulkes-Crabbe in 'The Gold Coast Times'. Part Three: Innovation, cultural editing, and the emergence of new genres, has three essays, looking at Asante obituaries and commemorations (Ghana), the pamphlets, poems and other writings in Yoruba of a Nigerian schoolmaster, and literary circles, opportunities, and continuing debates in Hausa literary production (Nigeria). [ASC Leiden abstract] |
