Margaret Busby’s anthology Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present came out in 1992, a groundbreaking collection of over 1000 pages that brought together a breathtaking array of work, spanning different genres and various works of translation. New Daughters of Africa is the follow-up volume, first published in 2019, and, while clocking in at a modest 900-odd pages, is an equally impressive project.
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On 20 September 2023, we spoke with Mithu Sanyal and Alta L. Price as part of our event series “Author meets Translator”. You can read the conversation here.
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When you think of Cottbus, its (post)colonial entanglements might not be the first thing that come to mind. But a small group affiliated to the local university have taken up the task of confronting just these aspects of the city’s history. At the tail end of August, on a broiling late summer day, I was lucky enough to be allowed to tag along on this tour in Cottbus, which bills itself not just as postcolonial, but as postcolonial-and-postsocialist.
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It’s an ingredient which crosses – cultural, political, geographical – boundaries and yet it does not show a lesser degree of respect wherever it goes.
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“Politics is my first love”, she begins, and it certainly shows as the novel tracks a particular political time and feeling: one where revolutionary hopes give way to futures that fall short of expectation. It is a complex story, succinctly described by the book jacket as “connecting contemporary Shanghai, late Apartheid-era South Africa, and China during the Great Leap Forward and the Tiananmen uprising — and refracting this globe-trotting and time-travelling through [Langston] Hughes’ confessional letters to a South African protégé about the poet’s time in Shanghai [in the 1930s]”.
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Chude-Sokei explores the historical connections between race and technology. He looks back to the time of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people and works his way through various historical stages to current issues surrounding artificial intelligence.
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Vaters Meer follows the thoughts of a boy who has to deal with the loss of his father with great sensitivity.
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Now in its fifth year running, taking place from 25-27 August in the Alte Münze at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, the African Book Festival Berlin, organised by the team at InterKontinental, serves as a vital platform for African literature in Berlin’s — and Germany’s — literary scene.
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A warm invitation to the next poco.lit. Event: A conversation with Mithu Sanyal and Alta L. Price about language, cultural appropriation, cancel culture and humour.
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At 190 pages, Les lieux qu’habitent mes rêves (The Places Where My Dreams Reside) is a short novel. It is a thoroughly spiritual book, but one that introduces different forms of spirituality.
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