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In Search of Africa by Manthia Diawara (2000, Trade Paperback)
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A book that does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. No obvious damage to the cover, with the dust jacket (if applicable) included for hard covers. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. May be very minimal identifying marks on the inside cover. Very minimal wear and tear. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.
- Buy It NowIn Search of Africa by Manthia Diawara (2000, Trade Paperback)
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eBay item number:164715054182
Item specifics
- Condition
- ISBN
- 9780674004085
About this product
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10
0674004086
ISBN-13
9780674004085
eBay Product ID (ePID)
1731723
Product Key Features
Number of Pages
300 Pages
Language
English
Publication Name
In Search of Africa
Subject
Africa / West, International Relations / General, General, World / African, Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, African
Publication Year
2000
Type
Textbook
Subject Area
Art, Political Science, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, History
Format
Trade Paperback
Dimensions
Item Height
0.7 in
Item Weight
16.8 Oz
Item Length
9.4 in
Item Width
6.6 in
Additional Product Features
Intended Audience
Scholarly & Professional
Reviews
Part commentary, part memoir, Manthia Diawara's In Search of Africa is a deeply moving and honest exploration of personal and national loss and renewal in today's Africa and black America., Whatever our ideas about African culture and politics, Manthia Diawara's In Search of Africa will disturb them deeply. If we insist on the importance of ritual and purity, this book will compel us to take seriously the impact of the political quest for modernity and the hybridity of contemporary West African culture. If we believe that a progressive African future will be predicated on leaving religious traditions behind, Diawara's long lost friend, who carves masks for the tourist market, will convince us otherwise. Like its author, this provocative text crosses borders, boundaries, and disciplines to offer one of the most thoughtful, complicated, and ultimately illuminating reflections on Africa we have seen in decades., The balanced essays range broadly, moving from Richard Wright to Williams Sassine's Afro-pessimism, 'homeboy cosmopolitanism,' Malcom X, griot culture, contemporary mask-carving, and West African market culture...Highly recommended for all libraries as an 'insider's view' of contemporary West Africa., This is a book the author could have titled 'Ce que je crois: What I Believe In.' It is a testimony, and a very courageous one. Diawara posits himself squarely as a witness and testifies about Africa, being black, and the African-American context., While friendship quest provides the basic narrative structure of Diawara's In Search of Africa , the book is interspersed with a series of important 'situational' essays that give the text an additional rich layer of intellectual depth. From considerations of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay Black Orpheus , which served as an introduction to Leopold Senghor's landmark 1948 Negritude anthology of new African poetry in French, to contemporary Afro-American hip-hop, 'homeboys,' and the films of Spike Lee, Diawara's meditations on African and Afro-American culture and politics are wide-ranging, provocative, and never less than engaging...Once more, a sometimes abstract 'search for Africa' bumps up against real-life experience. The result is illuminating not only for Manthia Diawara, but equally for those of us for whom Africa remains an unknown continent., In 1996, after a 32-year absence, Diawara returned to his childhood home of Guinea, West Africa. This insightful...book is his account of that prodigal son's journey...Though fluent in local languages and deeply conversant with local custom, he was still overwhelmed by Africa: 'How many times I have retreated from Africa into my hotel room!' he writes, with typical honesty. He also embarked upon a poignant search to find his childhood best friend, leading to a series of incidents where his writing sparkles. His account of his teenage gang organizing the festival Woodstock-in-Bamako is fascinating., In Search of Africa is a smart, rewarding study by a native-born African attempting to recapture the mystique of a distant past. In his search, we are enlightened as we grapple with his conclusion that 'the salvation of Africa lies in modernization, the creation of a secular public sphere, and the freedom of individuals.' Diawara convincingly demonstrates that we left not only our minds in Africa but a portion of our hearts and souls., In Search of Africa is one of the most outstanding works of cultural criticism/memoir I have ever read. It is dazzling in its range and extraordinarily compassionate in its judgments., In Search of Africa is a classic--it is very strong medicine for an age of cynicism and pessimism. Diawara blasts a passage through most of what has been written about the vibrant continent which gave us the beats and moves of the world's dances. His honesty and passion for the truth make the text riveting, and the search for his old schoolyard chum has novelistic bite and power. This is a book I will treasure., In Search of Africa brings us, all of us, home to a place we never knew. By traveling back and forth between cultures, continents, and languages--by wrestling, and momentarily defeating, the deceptions of racial and class identities--Manthia Diawara ís rare intelligence exposes the shared heart of modernity in Europe, Africa, and America., This is a serious book by one who cares deeply for Africa. It does not descend into the level of travelogue or voyeurism. The book raises deep questions about Africa, its people and culture, and its future. Although the book concentrates on West Africa and on Guinea in particular, the issues examined are continental and applicable to the social and political situation of Africa today. The author writes with deep knowledge of Africa and is able to connect Africa with the diaspora. His view of Africa is thoughtful, rather than romantic...This masterful book deserves the widest circulation., As a cultural boomerang--someone who has traveled from Guinea and Mali to America and back--Diawara has a unique perspective on the struggles of Africa to define itself in a postcolonial age. For those of us on the opposite side--Americans looking to Africa--this is a crucial new perspective on an Africa in constant transition., In Search of Africa is not contained neatly like an American mall, but operates like the stalls of an African market, offering from chapter to chapter a bit of memoir, a study of Black American and African cinema, African music, 20th-century art, and political and economic theory. But the African market is more than a metaphor...Diawara believes the market has the potential to liberate women...and reduce Africa's dependence on European aid and economic models., Manthia Diawara's In Search of Africa avoids the extremes which characterize contemporary writing about Africa. The scholars and writers whose objective seems to be that of discrediting the continent and its people and the starry-eyed romances about the Africa of the griot. With cogent and brilliant prose, Diawara illuminates our understanding of an Africa caught between the ancient and the modernity, the Africa of the early heroic epics, and that of the Afro-Pessimists. As a bi-continental cosmopolitan writer Diawara not only tells the reader what it means to be an African but an American as well, and Diawara, this African, is more American than any of us., While friendship quest provides the basic narrative structure of Diawara's In Search of Africa, the book is interspersed with a series of important 'situational' essays that give the text an additional rich layer of intellectual depth. From considerations of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay Black Orpheus, which served as an introduction to Leopold Senghor's landmark 1948 Negritude anthology of new African poetry in French, to contemporary Afro-American hip-hop, 'homeboys,' and the films of Spike Lee, Diawara's meditations on African and Afro-American culture and politics are wide-ranging, provocative, and never less than engaging...Once more, a sometimes abstract 'search for Africa' bumps up against real-life experience. The result is illuminating not only for Manthia Diawara, but equally for those of us for whom Africa remains an unknown continent.
Dewey Edition
21
Illustrated
Yes
Dewey Decimal
973/.0496
Table Of Content
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
Synopsis
"There I was, standing alone, unable to cry as I said goodbye to Sidimé 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 Sékou Touré, 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 Sidimé 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 Kéita, 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., "There I was, standing alone, unable to cry as I said goodbye to Sidim 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 S kou Tour , 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 Sidim 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 K ita, 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., There I was, standing alone, unable to cry as I said goodbye to Sidim 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 S kou Tour , 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 Sidim 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 K ita, 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., In 1996 Diawara, a distinguished professor of film and literature in New York City, returned to Guinea, 32 years after he and his family were expelled from the newly liberated country. Diawara's journey 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.
Item description from the seller
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- e***l (275)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseFast shipping. Item packed well. Had a problem with the item when it arrived. Contacted seller and was nicely surprised at the options I had and the great communications we had. Problem resolved quickly. Would certainly recommend this seller
- 1***5 (2)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseCame within the week it said it would, Packaging was great no issues with the box and came nice and wrapped. Everything was as described and great condition and communication was great. Value was great as well. Thank you!MEGHAN TRAINOR "NO" BLACK HAT ADJUSTABLE BACK (#155434929446)
- l***a (26)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseSeller didn't answer my msg about combined shipping, but immediately accepted my lower offer and package arrived perfectly, fantastic.
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Seller feedback (2,658)
- e***l (275)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseFast shipping. Item packed well. Had a problem with the item when it arrived. Contacted seller and was nicely surprised at the options I had and the great communications we had. Problem resolved quickly. Would certainly recommend this seller
- 1***5 (2)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseCame within the week it said it would, Packaging was great no issues with the box and came nice and wrapped. Everything was as described and great condition and communication was great. Value was great as well. Thank you!MEGHAN TRAINOR "NO" BLACK HAT ADJUSTABLE BACK (#155434929446)
- l***a (26)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseSeller didn't answer my msg about combined shipping, but immediately accepted my lower offer and package arrived perfectly, fantastic.