“George rethinks the entirety of African literature by considering texts from the 19th century and mid-20th century alongside canonical texts.” —Neil ten Kortenaar, author of Debt, Law, Realism Alert to the ways in which critical theory and imaginative literature can enrich each other, African Literature and Social Change reframes the ongoing project of African literature. Concentrating on texts that are not usually considered together—writings by little-known black missionaries, so called “black whitemen,” and better-known 20th century intellectuals and creative writers—Olakunle George shows the ways in which these writings have addressed notions of ethnicity, nation, and race and how the debates need to be rehistoricized today. George presents Africa as a site of complex desires and contradictions, refashioning the way African literature is positioned within current discussions of globalism, diaspora, and postcolonialism. “A bold exploration of the complexity of different modes of writing about Africa in the context of current debates on the nature of the literary in the production of African knowledge. Concerned with a rhetoric of self-writing as it has developed over two hundred years, Olakunle George attends to local details within the larger configurations of colonial discourse in this ambitious and timely work. It is a caution against the neglect of the conditions of possibility that made an African literature possible.” —Simon Gikandi, author of Slavery and the Culture of Taste “A new and welcome addition to the field of African literary studies, Olakunle George’s African Literature and Social Change is dense where it needs to be and glories in productive close readings when its objects call for it.” —Comparative Literature Studies
Of the world’s famous mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada is one of the most spectacular in the number and variety of its lakes. From Lassen Peak in the north to Mount Whitney in the south, the crest and Banks of the great barrier are flecked with the blue of thousands of them—there are 429 in Yosemite Park alone, and in a single area of 220 square miles at the southern end of Lake Tahoe there is a galaxy of more than a hundred. These ice-blue pools lie casually in the most unexpected places—in bleak cirques well above timber line, in river bottoms, in densely timbered canyons, and on the summits of boulder-strewed passes. They range in size from navigable bodies of 300 square miles to small glacial ponds of a few acres. Almost every imaginable geologic origin is represented somewhere among them, as well as some unimaginable freaks of contour. As John Muir was probably the first to point out, theirs is the charm of the unpredictable. Around them centers much of the history of California and Nevada, and until now no comprehensive effort has been made by anyone to narrate it. Dr. and Mrs. Hinkle, who are well-nigh ideally equipped to delineate the fascinating history of the Sierra lakes and their near-lying Great Basin neighbors. Both are the descendants of long lines of pioneer forebears. Both were born and grew up in Truckee, the main gateway of the transcontinental route between Nevada and California. Both are inheritors of a great love for the region and of a great mass of family and traditionary lore concerning it. Both are trained in the employment of bibliographical and historical tools for the writing of history. Finally, as husband and wife, they constitute a well-geared, smoothly functioning literary team, each member of which reinforces and supplements the labors and perceptions of the other.
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